THE- 



CRIME 

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CHRISTENDOM 



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THE 

CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM 

OR THE EASTERN QUESTION 

From Its Origin to the Present Time 



Bv 
DANIEL SEELYE GREGORY, d.d.,ll.d. 

Ex-President Lake Forest University; Late Managing Editor 

^'Standard Dictionary" ; Editor "Homiletic Review"; 

A uthor of ''^Christian Ethics "/ ''''Key to the 

Gospels ",■ etc., etc. 



THE 



Hbbcy press 



PUBLISHERS 

114 

FIFTH AVENUE 

NEW YORK 



84445 

Library of Conpreae 

Two Copies Received 
DEC 5 1900 

Copyright (fltrv 

No.Ci..$.9./.^.i^. 
SECOND COPY 

UeKvored to 

ORDER DIVISION 

DEC 22 190Q 



"^ 31 \ 



Copyright, igoo, 

by 

THE 

Bbbeg iPre06 

in 

the 
United States 

and 
Great Britain 



All Rights Reserved. 



To the memory of that uncrowned king but most royal 

soul, 

PEINCE ALBEET OF ENGLAND, 

Who did his best to prevent the iniquity of the Crimean 
War, and of 

"ALEXANDER THE LIBERATOR," 

that noblest monarch of his age, who once at immense 
cost liberated the Christians of Turkey, and to England's 

"GRAND OLD MAN," 

Needing no earthly crown, who has so often championed 
the cause of the Christian against the Turk ; 

To the innumerable Christians of the Ottoman Empire 
who have won the martyr's crown because the beneficent 
purposes of these men and their helpers have been balked 
by shameful and unrighteous diplomacy; 

To the sacred cause of the millions of enslaved and 
terrorized Christians that are helplessly awaiting their 
fate at the hands of the "Great Assassin"; 

To the hosts in Christian America, in Great Britain and 
on the Continent of Europe that are or ought to be de- 
voted to the high task of their deliverance; 

This essay is respectfully dedicated. 




DANIEL SEELYE GREGORY D.D., L.L.D. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 



TJiis book is an outgrowth from an article written 
by Dr. Gregory for the " Princeton Review " {^January, 
iSyS), wJdcJi the Margins of Salisbury {now Premier of 
Great Britain) pronounced the ablest discussion of that 
side of the Eastern Question published in Europe 
or America ; and which probably brought a Jiigher 
price than zuas ever before given for such an article. 
The publishers feel confident that the present volume 
will more than fulfil the reputation of the article. 
It is luminous, many-sided aitd masterly in its marshal- 
ing of the facts in the case, and will become the final 
authority on this S7ibject. Some of the facts in connec- 
tion zuith Dr. Gregory' s biography are summarized as 
follows from the " Schajf-Hersog Encyclopedia " and else- 
where : Born at Car me I, N. Y., August 21st, 1 8j 2 ; grad- 
uated State Normal College, Albany, N. Y., October 
jd, 18^0 ; Princeton University in iS^y ; Theological 
Seminary, Princeton, i860 ; licensed April, i860, by 
the Presbytery of Bedford, N. Y. ; ordained at Galena, 
III., February 2jd, 1861 ; pastor of South Presbyterian 
Church, Galena, 1 860-6 j ; Second Presbyterian Church, 
Troy, N. Y., i86j-66 ; Third Congregational Church, 
New Haven, Connecticut, i866-6g ; Presbyterian Church, 
South Salem, N. Y., i86g-'/i. Dr. Gregory has won 
his chief success in liter attire and as an educator ; par^ 
ticularly as a teacher of the philosophical aiid mental 

y 



Vi PUBLISHEES' NOTE. 

sciences, in which he has often been named, with the late 
Dr. McCosh and the late Dr. Hopkifis, in the first rank. 
His " Christian Ethics'' is a text-book in many of the 
universities and was used in Yale and Princeton. He 
was instructor in English and Rhetoric in Princeton 
University, 18^8-60 ; Professor of Logic, Metaphysics 
and English in the University of Wooster, Ohio, iSyi- 
yS ; President of tlie Lake Forest University, iSj8-86 ; 
L. P. Stone Lecturer in Princeton Theological Seminary, 
1884.-8^ ; Managing Editor of ^'' Standard Dictionary,'' 
i8^o-g^, doing all the final work of definition and re- 
vision ; Editor of ^'- The Homiletic Review," the most 
widely circulated homiletic periodical, from i8g^ to the 
present time. We subjoin a number of Dr. Gregory's 
most important books: ^^ Christian Ethics," 18^^; 
" Why Four Gospels ? " 1876 ; " Practical Logic," 1881 ; 
" The Church in America a7id its Baptism of Fire " {in 
conjunction with The Rev. S. B. Halliday), i8g6 ; 
" Christ's Trumpet Call to the Ministry" i8g6 ; " TJie 
Crime -of Christendom" {the present work), igoo. Dr. 
Gregory received his A. B. from Princeton University 
in i8s7 ; A. M. in i860 ; D. D. in 1873 ; and LL. D. 
in i8p6. THE 

ABBEY PRESS. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

PAOK 

I. Constantinople and the Eastern Question. .4 1 

(I.) The City and its History 1 

(II.) The Eastern Question— "What Is It ? 7 

II. The Peoples Involved 13 

(I.) The Turk: His Character and Rights 13 

(II.) The Russian : His Character and Purposes 24 

(III.) Great Britain — Her Character and Course 40 

(IV.) Other Races and Complications 44 

CHAPTER II. 

The Greek Revolution 48 

I. The Greek Race ani Fate 49 

II. The Greek Rising and Independence 53 

CHAPTER III. 

The Crimean War— Its Aims and Results '. 58 

I. Continued Turkish Barbarities 58 

II. Russia the Only Obstacle 60 

III. The Rousing of Russia, and the Course of Diplo- 

macy 67 

IV. The Crimean War and its Immediate Results 71 

V. Remoter Results of the Crimean War 76 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Slavic Crisis and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. 79 

I. Twenty Years of the Hatt-i-Humayoun 80 

(I.) The Turkish Principles in Full Operation 82 

(II.) Some Specimen Butcheries of this Period 85 

iii 



IV CONTEISTTS. 

PAGB 

II. The Crisis that Led to Russian Intervention 98 

(I.) The Diplomatic Struggle between Christian Europe 

and " Commercial England " 99 

(II.) European Turkey at the Opening of the War 117 

III. The Eussian Intervention and theResults of the War. . 124 

(I.) The Way for Intervention Opened 125 

(II.) The Russian Advance and Victory, and British Jin- 
goism : 131 

CHAPTER V. 

The Armenians in the Eastern Question 139 

I. The Armenians Themselves 141 

II. The Armenian Church 148 

III. The Present Situation and Condition of the Armen- 
ians , 153 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Armenian Crisis and Massacres 179 

I. First Year of Butchery, 1894 179 

(I.) Events Leading to it 180 

(II.) Massacre at Sassun 189 

II. Second Year of Butchery, 1895 '. .199 

(I.) The Bloody October of 1895 202 

(II.) The Bloody November of 1895 209 

(III.) The Slaughter of December, 1895 217 

III. The Third Year of Butchery, 1896 220 

Massacre at Constantinople 222 

IV. Summary of Results and Responsibilities 229 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Latest Phase of the Eastern Question 239 

I. The Cretan Uprising, and the History that Led to it 240 

II. The Intervention of Greece, and the Conduct of the 

Powers 246 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Conclusions, Possibilities, and Responsibilities 256 

I. Some Established Conclusions 256 

(I.) The Failure of Diplomacy 256 

(II.) The Hopelessness from the Concert of Europe 260 



CONTENTS. V 

PAGE 

(III.) Demonstrated Impossibility of Reform by the 

Turk 269 

CIV.) Things Essential to a Righteous Solution 277 

(V.) A Question of Morals rather than of Politics 288 

II. The Present Situation and Some Possibilities 290 

(I. ) The Elements Involved in the Struggle 290 

(II.) The Ultimate Outcome 295 

(III.) Suggestions of Responsibility 306 

MAPS. 

I. Ethnographic Map of Turkey in Europe before the 

Russo-Turkish War 117 

II. Map of the Armenian Plateau 143 

III. The Region of the Recent Massacres 166 



PREFACE. 



The Eastern Question has within the last half decade 
reached the extreme stage of complication and seriousness. 
The present deadlock of European diplomacy has resulted 
in securing for the Sultan of Turkey a free hand in carry- 
ing out the settled policy of Mohammedanism, in the exter- 
mination of his Christian subjects from Mt. Ararat to the 
Balkans, — a policy in which the butcheries of the Armen- 
ians, the harrying of Crete and Macedonia, and the Grseco- 
Turkish War are but incidents. Abd-ul-Hamid has been 
made practically master of the situation, and is astutely 
working for the Eenaissance of Islam. And the Christian 
world has shown, by failing to attempt to put a stop to the 
dreadful condition of affairs in the Orient, that up to date 
it has not grasped the situation, and has adequately felt 
y neither the grip of responsibility nor the impulse of duty 
in the matter. 

Christendom sorely needs to be made acquainted with the 
actual state of things in the Orient. There is the fact that, 
in the course of recent years, the Turk has butchered in 
cold blood and with all the accompaniments of incon- 
ceivable savagery well nigh 100,000 Christian men, women 
and children, and has subjected several times that num- 
ber of the living to unspeakable demonstrations of brutality, 
torture, lust and degradation, often worse than death it- 
self. There is the further fact that, by the grace of so- 
called Christian Powers, with his trained and mobilized 



PEEFACE. 

ai*my of more than half a million men, Abd-nl-Hamid has 
the power to repeat at any time the same diabolical work 
on the scale of his Empire. The apathy of the Christian 
world demonstrates that these facts need to he brought 
home to its consciousness and its conscience. 

But it is true that if the Christians of Christendom 
were fully aware of the awful realities and of their own 
obligations, the political obstacles in the way of applying 
the proper remedies would seem to be well nigh insurmount- 
able. Twenty years ago that distinguished Orientalist and 
scholar, Mr. F. W. !N"ewman, clearly showed * that the 
British Ministry had by slow degrees usurped the place of 
the nation, and did not hesitate even to declare war in 
secret Cabinet without consulting Privy Council or people. 
The intervening years have crystallized and intrenched 
that policy of despotism in all the European nations under 
shelter of militarism, and the Governments have, through 
the " Concert of Europe,^^ bound their Christian subjects 
hand and foot. 

It is clear then that two things must be done before any 
adequate and permanent relief can be assured to the en- 
slaved and suffering Christian subjects of the Ottoman 
ruler : (1) the facts must be brought home to the con- 
science of Christendom, and (2) the Christian peoples of 
the world must be roused to reassert and enforce that basal 
principle of modern civilization, the right of the people to 
rule. 

These requirements set the twofold aim of the present 
discussion. It seeks to present a clear and comprehensive 
view of the facts in the history and policy of Turkey and 
the European Powers in connection with the Eastern Ques- 
tion, and to fix the responsibility for the ever-recurring 

* See The Contemporary Eeview, November, 1877, p. 97, " On the 
War Power." See also a discussion of this subject, by the present 
writer, in The Princeton Eeview, January, 1878, " The Eastern 
Problem." 



PREFACE. 

horrors. It seeks also to do something, if may be, towards 
leading to cooperation in the " Forward Movement" — the 
new Moral Crusade — inaugurated by the grandest men in 
Great Britain for the purpose of taking the Eastern Ques- 
tion out of politics and forcing the Governments to carry 
out the will of their Christian subjects in emancipating 
the Christians of Turkey. They appeal to all Christendom 
to join in the movement ; the ground of the appeal is that 
all Christendom is measurably responsible for this greatest 
Crime of the Ages. 

In the narrow limits set for the treatment of so vast a 
subject, it is barely possible to point out the sources from 
which more complete information may be drawn, to out- 
line the historic movement, and to give hints and sugges- 
tions touching the responsible parties and the grounds for 
holding them responsible. If some of the utterances shall 
at first blush appear to be too strong, the apology must be 
that they have had their origin in profound feeling and 
conviction, and that no possible words are adequate to the 
full expression of the horrors and the guilt involved. 

Acknowledgements are due — in addition to those made 
in the pages of the work — to the many distinguished men 
that have treated the various phases of the Eastern Ques- 
tion, especially to Canon Malcolm MacColl, William Ewart 
Gladstone, Justin McCarthy, and the Duke of Argyll, and 
to the numerous authoritative writers in " The Contem- 
porary Review " that have treated that Question in every 
phase and aspect of it. 

D. S. Gregory. 
New Yokk City, 



THE CEIIE OF CHEISTENDOM. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

I. CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE EASTERN QUESTION. 

Constantinople (that is. City of Constantine) of the 
Christian age — the Byzantium of the earlier time, and the 
Stamboul of the Turk — is a natural center of 
power and influence. Philip Smith, the his- ^Epochs "^^"^ 
torian of the world, has suggested that much 
may be said in favor of the founding of the new city Con- 
stantinople in place of the old Byzantium, by Constantine 
in 324, its capture by the Turks in 1453, and its rescue 
from the Russian attack in 1853, as three signal epochs by 
which the history of the world may be divided:^ 

(I.) The City akd its History. 

Its founding, at the beginning of the sole reign of Con- 
stantine and his open acknowledgment of 
Christianity as the religion of the Roman em-jj^^^^j^^^^ °jg 
pire, was significant of the overthrow of the 
old pagan world. Dr. Philip Schaff truthfully portrayed 
its relation to Christianity when he said : 

I Philip Smith, Ancient History, vol. 3, p. 687, 



2 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

" Constantinople, the city of the first Christian emperor (New 
Rome), though now in the hands of the Turk, is still the natural 
centre of the whole Greek Church, and may become for the East- 
ern world, at some future day, in Christian hands, what Gregory 
Nazianzen eloquently described it to be in the fourth century, 
' tlie eye of the world, the strongest by sea and land, the bond 
of union between East and West, to which the most distant 
extremes from all sides come together, and to which they look 
up as to a common centre and emporium of the faith.' " 

While its fonnding identified it with universal Chris- 
tianity, its position on the Bosporus where it enters the 
Sea of Marmora — upon seven hills on a triangular penin- 
sula, with the magnificent harbor formed by the Golden 
Horn on the north, separating it from its large suburbs, 
Galata and Pera, and with only the mile-wide Bosporus 
between it and Scutari on the Asiatic side — makes it one of 
the great natural commercial centers of the world and gives 
it command of the trade of a vast extent of territory that 
has always been rich in its productions and promises to 
grow greatly richer with the passing years. 

The capture of Constantinople by the Turk in 1453 
proved, as seen in the light of history, an equally mo- 
mentous event. Christendom of that day was 
C suntinople ^^^^ ^^P ^^ ^^'^^ Eastern or Greek Church with 
its center at Constantinople, and the Western 
or Latin or Roman Church with its center at Eome. The 
schism that had occurred only three centuries before, but 
the doctrinal ground of which dated back to the adoption 
of the fiUoque doctrine (the doctrine of the procession of 
the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as from the Father) 
by the Latins at the council of Toledo in 589, had 
brought the East and the West into pronounced antag- 
onism. Eor seven centuries and more the Mohammedans 
had been seeking to conquer Christian Europe. The 
Moors had attacked Western Christendom by way of Gib- 
raltar and had forced the passage of the Pyrenees. Beaten 
back by the Prankish king Charles at the battle of Tours 



INTRODUCTORY. 3 

in 732 — from which that king was surnamed Martel (i. e. 
the " Hammer") — they established the renowned Moorish 
Empire in Spain, facing Roman Christendom with a threat- 
ening front. The Mohammedans had early crossed into 
Europe on the East and, aided by the enmity or apathy 
of Western Christendom, had established the capital of 
the Ottoman Empire at Adrianople in 1366. At the open- 
ing of the jfif teen th century, what with the military prestige 
of the Turk and the showy civilization of the Moor, it 
seemed an unsettled question whether Christianity or Mo- 
hammedanism would win the victory in Europe, with the 
chances apparently in favor of the latter. A half century 
more of pressure on the Ottoman side apparently settled 
that question in favor of the Moslem. The Turkish Sul- 
tan, Mahomet II., besieged Constantinople. The heart- 
rending appeals to the West for succor were unheeded. 
The animosity of the Western Church was too great, where 
the apathy was not too profound. Mahomet took the city 
by storm in May, 1453, and sacked and desolated it. Con- 
stantino Paleologus, the last of the Constantines, died 
bravely fighting at the head of his army. It seemed the 
great disaster of all time. 

It is well to dwell for a little upon the Fall of Constanti- 
nople, for it furnishes the key to modern history, and 
especially to that history as related to the so- 
called Eastern Question. The taking of Con- ^I'^^^tS^s!^ 
stantinople by the Turk brought down the iron 
heel of Islam upon the Eastern Christians, Greek, Syriac, 
Nestorian and Armenian, with the Greek at the point of 
heaviest pressure. It was for them all the beginning of 
centuries of oppression and robbery and persecution and 
butchery, or, as Mr. Gladstone has put it, of " plunder, 
murder, rape and torture.'' Dr. Philip Schaff briefly re- 
hearses the story of the Greek Church in memorable 
words : ^ 

1 Johnsojj's Universal Encyclopedia, vol, 8, p, 671. 



4 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

" The Greek church has no continuous history like the Latin 
or the Protestant. She has long periods of monotony and stagna- 
tion ; she is isolated from the main current of progressive Chris- 
tendom ; her languages and literature are little known among 
Western scholars ; she has more interest for the antiquarian and 
traveller than for the historian and philosopher. Yet this Church 
is the oldest in Christendom, and for several centuries she was 
the chief bearer of our religion. She still occupies the sacred 
territory of primitive Christianity, and claims most of the apos- 
tolic sees, as Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, and the churches 
founded by Paul and John in Asia Minor and Greece. All the 
apostles, with the exception of Peter and Paul, labored and died 
in the East. From the old Greek she inherited the language and 
certain national traits of character, while she incorporated into 
herself also much of Jewish and Oriental piety. She produced 
the first Christian literature, apologies of the Christian faith, 
refutation of heretics, commentaries of the Bible, sermons, 
homilies, and ascetic treatises. The great majority of the early 
Fathers, like the apostles themselves, used the Greek language. 
Even Clement of Rome, Hermas, Iren^us, Hippolytus, and others 
who belong to the Western church, wrote in Greek. The early 
popes were Greeks. The very name of pope is Greek, and belongs 
to every pastor in the East. The Roman congregation itself was 
originally a colony of Greek Christians, Hellenes and Jewish 
Hellenists. In this sense, too, the maxim of Horace holds good : 
' Grgecia capta ferum victorem cepit.' Polycarp, Ignatius, Clem- 
ent of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory 
of Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, 
and Cyril of Alexandria, the first Christian emperors from Con- 
stantine the Great, together with a host of martyrs and con- 
fessors, belong to the Greek communion. She elaborated the 
oecumenical dogmas of the Trinity and Christology , and ruled the 
first seven oecumenical councils, which were all held in Constan- 
tinople or its immediate neighborhood (Nicsea, Chalcedon, Ephe- 
sus) . Her palmy period during the firfet five centuries will ever 
claim the grateful respect of the whole Christian world, and her 
great teachers still live in their writings far beyond the confines 
— nay, even more outside of her communion, as the books of Moses 
and the prophets are more studied and better understood among 
Christians than among the Jews for whom* they wrote. But she 
never materially progressed beyond the standpoint occupied in 
the fifth and sixth centuries. She has no proper middle age, and 
ijp RefQrmation, like AVesterii Christe:iidom," 



I 



INTEODXJCTOEY. 5 

Mohammedanism early spread over the Eastern Church 
— Greeks Syriac and Armenian — as a deadening, blighting 
influence. The stagnation and slavery reached 
their height under the tyranny of the Turks ^^sJam"^ 
after the downfall of Constantinople, though 
the church maintained great tenacity of purpose in all its 
internal affairs. The first three centuries after the Otto- 
man conquest were a time of benumbing suffering and 
stupid hopelessness, while the present century in particular 
has been a time of prayer and struggle on the part of the 
millions of Christians in Southeastern Europe and Western 
Asia for independence from Turkish rule, — prayer and 
struggle inspired, in Greek and Slav and Armenian, by the 
sympathy and growing power of Eussia, and by some slight . 
evidences of the sympathy of Protestant Christendom. 
The progress in the work of deliverance of the Christian 
peoples will appear in the course of the present discussion. 
The necessity for that deliverance and the progress toward 
it, with the struggle of the Powers of Europe to prevent 
or stay it, have made the Eastern Question, and brought it 
at the close of the nineteenth century to its acutest crisis. 

But the Fall of Constantinople had other and wider re- 
sults. The Turk in getting possession of that city sat 
down across the gateways to India, the place 
whence riches came, and the lines of com- Re^uit^ 
.merce were in his control and the riches of 
the world at his feet. Europe was thus shut out, and 
Christendom shut out, from all the wealth of the world. 
But the fall of the Eastern Empire spurred the Eoman 
Christendom in the West to new and redoubled effort, and 
Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella, aided by the military 
genius of Gonzalo de Cordova, conquered Granada and 
expelled the Moor from Western Europe only forty years 
after the fall of Constantinople, and so became the fore- 
most power in Europe. A great nation, trained and dis- 
ciplined into strength and enterprise and chivalrous spirit 



6 THE CBIME OF CHRISTEKDOM. 

by seven hundred years of warfare with the Moors^ was thus 
compelled to seek new channels of adventure and a broader 
field of action. It was these two great events, the one in 
the Orient and the other in the Occident, that changed 
the destiny of the world. 

There followed in the train of these events — within 
seventy years after the fall of Constantinople and thirty 
after the conquest of Granada — as one of their results, the 
three notable voyages — of Columbus, De Gama, and Magel- 
lan — that opened the wealth of the New Indies and the 
Old India to Christendom. As another result the Greek 
learning and literature and especially the Greek Scriptures, 
that had been so long shut up in Constantinople, were scat- 
tered abroad over Europe and in half a century brought to 
its height the Eevival of Learning and brought in the 
Keformation that was to change the face of Christendom 
for all the future. All that wheeled the front of the world 
from the Orient to the Occident, gave to England in due 
time command of the commerce of all the seas, and put 
her in the place of the advance guard of Protestant Chris- 
tendom among the Teutonic peoples in shaping modern 
civilization. It would be hard to find in all history an 
event more revolutionary than the Fall of Constantinople. 

Both these events — the founding and the fall of Con- 
stantinople — are certainly notable epochs ; but for the 
rescue of Constantinople from the Eussian, 

Eescue of j^^^ig j;]-^a,t is favorable can be said. Outside 
Constantinople. _, . , ~ . , ,. ■,•,•• 

of a small circle oi aristocratic politicians m 

Great Britain, it is an event contemplated with mingled 
feelings of regret and shame, save as the hand of Provi- 
dence is seen in it. But even if the historian of compre- 
hensive views rejects it as unworthy of a place by the side 
of the other and signal epochs, he can not fail to see in 
the Greek Eevolution and the Crimean War the begin- 
ning of the leveling of the military pretensions of Great 
Britain and of the old European diplomacy, of the regen- 



INTRODUCTORY. 7 

eration of Eussia and of the final experiment of Europe 
with tlie Turk, and therefore, of the removal of the prin- 
cipal obstacles in the way of the settlement of the Eastern 
Question. 

There are, however, indications in the present aspect 
of affairs, that a third great pivotal event, altogether 
worthy, in connection with the City of Constantine, may 
lie in the very near future, and that it is again to be an 
event that will revolutionize the world as did the founding 
and the fall of that city. As twice before during the 
Christian era, so now the third time, the eyes of all intel- 
ligent and right-thinking men in Christendom are turned 
intently toward the great historical city of the Bosporus, 
with which the destinies of Christianity and the world have 
been so long and strangely liuked. Perhaps it is not too 
much to say that anticipation and hope are predominant 
in the Christian world as the vexed Eastern Question is 
thus apparently approaching a solution, not through the 
iniquitous diplomacy of the great nations, but through the 
irresistible moral trend of divine Providence. May not the 
signs of the times indicate an early and sweeping movement 
of victorious Christianity eastward from the old center on 
the Golden Horn, across the ancient world ? 

It will be seen that the third great pivotal event is not 
the rescue of Constantinople from the Eussian, upon which 
the most of Christendom look back with unmingled regret ; 
but the rescue of Constantinople from the Turk, to which 
they look forward with anxious longing and hope. 

(II.) The Easterist Question" — What Is It ? 

Out of the later results of the conquest of Constanti- 
nople by the Turks — including the oppression and slavery 
of the many millions of Christians under the Turkish 
barbarian and butcher ; the development of the empire 
of Great Britain in India and the East ; the rise, astonish- 



8 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

ing growth and colossal magnitude of tlie Russian Empire, 
the natural champion and protector of Greek Christianity ; 
and the slow and partial rousing of the sympathy and 
conscience of the western world — the so-called Eastern 
Question in its present form took rise. 

In its strict and narrow sense it is the question what 
is to be done with the southeast of Europe and the con- 
tiguous portions of Asia. Early in the pres- 

Moral Point ^^^^ century, it became apparent that the 
condition of affairs in Southeastern Europe 
was such that it could not much longer continue. As 
Justin McCarthy has said : ^ 

" It was certain that things could not remain as they then 
were, and nothing else was certain. The Ottoman Power had 
been settled during many centuries in the south-east of Europe. 
It had come in there as a conqueror, and had remained there only 
as a conqueror occupies the ground his tents are covering. The 
Turk had many of the strong qualities and even the virtues of a 
great warlike conqueror, but he had no capacity or care for the 
arts of peace. He never thought of assimilating himself to those 
whom he had conquered, or them to him. He disdained to learn 
anything from them ; he did not care whether or no they learned 
anything from him. It has been well remarked, that of all the 
races who conquered Greece, the Turks alone learned nothing from 
their gifted captives. Captive Greece conquered all the world ex- 
cept the Turks. They defied her. She could not teach them 
letters or arts, commerce or science. The Turks were not, as a 
rule, oppressive to the races that lived under them. They were 
not habitual persecutors of the faiths they deemed heretical. In 
this respect they often contrasted favorably with states that ought 
to have been able to show them a better example. In truth, the 
Turk for the most part was disposed to look with disdainful com- 
posure on what he considered the religious follies of the heretical 
races who did not believe in the Prophet. They wei'e objects of 
his scornful pity rather than of his anger. Every now and then, 
indeed, some sudden fierce outburst of fanatical cruelty toward 
some of the subject sects horrified Europe, and reminded her that 
the conqueror who had settled himself down in her south-eastern 

1 A History of Our Own Times, vol. 2, pp. 174-5. 



INTRODUCTOKY. 9 

corner was still a barbarian who had no right or place in civil- 
ized life." 

Judged by the facts of liis career this is, to say the least, 
a somewhat roseate view of the Turk as he is. It has 
been during the present century that he has carried on 
the great series of butcheries of his Christian subjects that 
have shown his true character and have four times brought 
a crisis in European politics. Had it not been for the 
political complications he would long since have been 
swept back into Western Asia — if not to the steppes of 
Central Asia from which he originally came down upon 
Europe. He has long been recognized as " the sick man," 
on the verge of dissolution ; but the balance of power 
in Europe has led the great nations to uphold him on his 
throne in spite of the cry of the millions of oppressed and 
suffering Christians. Taking into account the character 
of the Turk, from the point of view of religion, of moral- 
ity, and of humanity, the Eastern Question is one of the 
simplest and plainest ever raised. The most solemn duty 
of Christendom, the most imperative obligation of human- 
ity, is to set free the oppressed and to put an end to 
Turkish rule over Christians. 

From the point of view of European politics the East- 
ern Question has come to include the complications arising 
out of the possession by the Turks of the east 
of Europe and the possibility of Eussian pre- ^"of'view '"* 
dominance in the ^gean Sea. In its earlier 
stages it seemed to center in the Greek race, and there 
came the Greek Eevolution as the first great crisis. Then 
it came for a time to center in the Greek Church at large 
and Russia's relation to it, and there came the Crimean 
War as the second great crisis. Later it became connected 
with the Panslavic movement, and there resulted the 
Eusso-Turkish War growing out of the horrors of Turkish 
butchery in the Slavic belt of Turkey, as the third great 
crisis. In its present phase it was at first bound up with 



10 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

the Armenian cliurcli and race, in consequence of the at- 
tempted extermination of that race, which brought the 
present or fourth great crisis, but is now extending so 
as to embrace all the Christian peoples — Armenian, G-reek, 
Macedonian, etc. — still under the rule of the Turk. 

"While therefore the problem is so very simple from the 
religious, moral and humanitarian points of yiew, from the 
so-called political point of view the elements entering into 
it are seen to be very various, and the question a com- 
plicated one, the aspects of which vary with the different 
elements involved. The non-Turkish people, the Turks, 
the Eussians, Christian Europe at large, and notably 
Great Britain, are all more or less interested, and all have 
their modes of putting the question. 

The Turk asserts his right to continue to play the 
Turk in Europe. The cardinal thing with him is. How 
may the TurhisliruU ie maintained over the non-Turhish 
peoples 9 The non-Turkish peoples, who have been driven 
to desperation by ages of the most terrible oppression, 
assert their right to freedom, or, at least, to so much of 
freedom as is comprehended in autonomy. The one thing 
with them is, How canine reach the deliverance and freedom 
luhich are oitr just right 9 The Eussian has asserted above- 
breath his right, based upon race and religion, to protect 
and deliver the oppressed ; the suspicious say that under- 
breath he has asserted his own right to play the despot 
in the place of the Turk. The cardinal thing with him 
has been. How shall the Russians free these oppressed and 
struggling brethren loho appecd to them for help f Or, Hoio 
shall the final step toivard the completion of the. Pan- Slavic 
Empire lest he tahen 9 The Government of Great Britain 
openly asserts its right to deal with the entire matter in 
accordance with its very peculiar views of " British in- 
terests," and it regards the interests of Turk and Christian 
as alike subordinate to its own commercial ends ; while 
under-breath it claims the right by " manifest destiny " to 



INTRODUCTOEY. 11 

Egypt and the Suez Canal, to Stamboul as its great Eastern 
commercial capital and center, and to the Euphrates Val- 
ley Eailway Route. Apparently the only question that most 
of the Premiers of Great Britain have put to themselves is, 
Ilotv sliall the jjrogress of Russia l)e prevented and " British 
interests " he advanced, or the ivay he prepared for permanent 
British control in the Orient and in India f 

The advanced thought of Christendom led by Christian 
England, and at the present time expressing itself in the 
" Forward Movement " which aims to take the 
Eastern Question out of politics, boldly asserts pohi/of v^w *^ 
the right of the oppressed peoples of European 
Turkey to the freedom to which they aspire, and demands 
that the Machiaveldian policy of Europe and of the British 
Government be brought to an end, and his just deserts be 
meted out to the " unspeakable Turk." The question with 
the true Christendom is. How shall the Eastern problem he 
solved in accordance tuith the principles of humanity, 
morality and Christianity 9 

It is self-evident that if all the selfish claims of the nations 
are to be persisted in, and their selfish interests to be kept 
at the front, the solution of the Eastern Question must take 
its place among the impossibles, and the sooner all thought 
of its solution is given up the better. If the Turk be right, 
then the nou-Turkish people are wrong and the Christians 
of Turkey must be wrong ; and vice versa. If the Powers 
be right, then Christendom must be wrong. No adjustment 
is possible so long as these antagonisms prevail. 

It may further be taken for granted, by all who are 
not blinded by "polities'^ or " diplomacy,'^ that the only 
possible permanent settlement of the Oriental Question will 
have to be made on the basis of absolute right and justice. 
The unrighteous claims put forward in behalf of the vari- 
ous interests involved have alone stood in the way of a right- 
eous conclusion of the whole matter. The moment the 
principal parties concerned are brought to just views and 



12 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

jnst policy J, the hitherto insoluble problem will be solved. 
A consideration of the character and claims of these parties, 
and of the progress of events in bringing them to righteous- 
ness or in exposing the baselessness of their unrighteous 
pretensions will give a comprehensive view of the matter 
and make clear the recent marvelous progress toward a 
permanent adjustment. Such a consideration will make 
it abundantly plain, that although the problem may appear 
insoluble to the diplomatists who think they have it well 
in hand. Divine Providence — in these later years mani- 
festly so independent of the diplomatists — is pushing the 
matter inevitably to the right conclusion. 

The real question is. How shall the work of the Turk 
fully inaugurated in 1453 be undone and the long enslaved 
Christians be set free ? 

II. THE PEOPLES INVOLVED. 

It becomes evident from the very statement of the Eastern 
Question that, in order to understand -it in its various 
progressive phases, one must first understand the character 
and aims of the great races chiefly interested in it, their 
rights, and their relations to its settlement. 

(I.) The Tuek : His Ohaeacter aistd Eights. 

The Turk asserts his right to continue to play the Turk 
in Europe. If he be justly entitled to this, then it follows 
that the changes for the better in Southeastern Europe, 
which philanthropists and Christians supremely desire, 
must bide the will of the Sublime Porte, and be reached 
in that manner alone. The hoped for rescue of Constanti- 
nople will not come. 

It will be found by careful examination that the Turk 
has not won a permanent place in Europe by heroic char- 
acter or superior civilization. Certain writers 

Eight m -^ ^YxQ present age have made the Turk and 
the Mohammedan civilization their fetich. 



INTRODUCTORY. 13 

They would have men believe the Turk every way superior 
to the Greek race which he conquered, and his civilization 
every way in advance of the Greek culture 
which it supplanted. Mr. Buckle writes " Mo- cii^acter. 
hammed, the greatest man Asia has ever pro- 
duced/' and assures us in the same breath that " every one 
acquainted with the progress of civilization will allow that 
no small share of it is due to those gleams of light which, 
in the midst of surrounding darkness, shot from the great 
centers of Cordova and Bagdad." Mr. Draper goes even 
further and calls the rise of Islam the " Southern Eefor- 
mation," and claims for it the preservation of the truth of 
the one God which Christendom had lost, and the leader- 
ship in scientific progress. Even a moderate knowledge 
of history would have taught any one of ordinary discern- 
ment that, in the language of Professor Flint of Edinburgh, 
" although the Mohammedan was a powerful and in many 
respects admirable movement, it yet involved no great 
original idea, the religion which it contained and diffused 
being drawn from Jewish, and the scientific truth from 
Greek, sources.''^ Whewell and Eenan agree that the 
contributions of even the Arabian schools to science were 
insignificant, while to philosophy they added nothing. 

But whatever may be true of Mohammedanism in gen- 
eral or of the Arab in particular, the unquestionable verdict 
of all history must still be, that the Ottoman 
Turk, with whom we have to do in the East- character 
ern Question, has been from the beginning 
the enemy not only of Christianity but of all true civiliza- 
tion as well. 

To quote a common Arabic opinion that has passed into 
a proverb : '' Though the Turk should compass the whole 
circle of the sciences, he would still remain barbarian." 
History stamps the original Turk as brutal, sensual, 
savage, deceitful at the core of his nature, reckless in 
1 Theism. 



14 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

physical courage, a born robber and tyrant. The Arab 
will tell you : " Avoid the Tartar, if you can ; he will 
either eat you in his love or hack you to pieces in his hate/^ 
His religion has not improved him ; rather it has 
developed the worst parts of his nature. Mohammedan- 
ism at the best, as ISTeander has shown, suppresses wholly 
the sense of relationship and communion with God, and 
so prevents the developments that are the glory of a 
Christian civilization. The marvelous pictures, given in 
these days, of the devout communion of the Mussulman 
with God are the merest fancy sketches. He has no sense 
whatever of the presence of God. Major Osborn, who 
confirms this fact, shows that there is no possible element 
of progress in Islam. Add to this the fact of the divine 
sanction it gives to the darker and lower passions of man's 
nature, and its degrading character, even at the best, 
becomes manifest. It must brutalize man. Concerning 
the inseparable evils of Islam, Sir W. Muir, one of the 
acknowledged authorities, says ^ : 

" Setting aside considerations of minor import, three ^ radical 
. , ^. evils flow from the faith (of Islam) in all ages and 
in every country, and must continue to flow so 
long as the Koran is the standard of belief. First, polygamy, 
divorce, and slavery are maintained and perpetuated ; striking 
at the roots of public morals, poisoning domestic life, and disor- 
ganizing society. Second, freedom of thought and private judg- 
ment are crushed and annihilated. The sword still is and must 
remain the inevitable penalty for the renunciation of Islam. 
Toleration is unknown. Third, a barrier has been interposed 
against the reception of Christianity. They labor under a miser- 
able delusion who suppose that Mahometanism paves the way 
for a purer faith. No system could have been devised with more 
consummate skill for shutting out the nations over which it has 
sway from the light of truth. . . . The sword of Mahomet and 
the Koran are the most stubborn enemies of civilization, liberty, 
and truth, which the world has yet known. To the combination, 
or rather the unity, of the spiritual and political elements in the 

' Life of Mahomet, pp. 534-5 and 575. 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

unvarying type of Mahometan government must be attributed 
that utter absence of candid and free investigation into tlie origin 
and trutli of Islam wliich so painfully characterizes the Moslem 
mind even to the present day. The faculty of criticism has been 
annihilated by the sword." 

But the Turk has not had Mohammedanism at its best. 
He has always followed the system at Abou Hanifa^ the 
second of the four great orthodox Imams or founders of 
schools of doctrine. It is the Mohammedan Jesuitism. 
Hanifa's system was reached by deduction from the Koran, 
and was intended to meet the exigencies arising from the 
lax morality of Kouf a, a commercial city. It assumes that 
whatever can be deduced from the Koran is true. There 
is a verse in the second Sura of the Koran which says : 
" God has created the whole earth for you." That text, 
say the Hanifite jurists, is a deed which annuls all other 
rights of property. The " you " means, of course, the 
true believers. He then classifies the whole earth under 
three heads : (1) Land which never had an owner. (3) 
Land which had an owner, and has been abandoned. (3) 
The persons and the property of the Infidels. From this 
third division the same legist deduces the legitimacy of 
slavery, piracy, and a state of perpetual war between the 
Faithful and the unbeliveing world. These are all methods 
whereby the Moslem enters into the possession of his God- 
given inheritance. 

It must be remembered that it is this doctrine — the 
further legitimate developments of which it is easy to 
anticipate — and not the Koran, pure and simple, nor even 
the higher teachings of the Imams, Malek, As Shafi,.and 
Abu Hanbal — that has molded the Ottoman in his fanati- 
cism, sensuality and despotic and heartless cruelty. 

Mr. Gladstone, accordingly, called attention over 
twenty years ago to the fact that the present difficulty 
in the East is not a question of Molwmme- 
damsm, pure and simple, but of Mohamme- view, 
danism compounded with the peculiar char- 



16 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

acter of the race. He might have gone further, and pro- 
nounced it a question of the worst form of Moliamme- 
danism compounded with the peculiar character of a very 
had race. 

The Turk of the present day is a strangely mixed being, 
— in blood, Turanian ; in religion, Semitic ; in surround- 
ings, Indo-European ; immovable amidst changes, un- 
civilized in the midst of civilization ; feared and disliked 
by all men ; forced, in his official capacity, and in his ex- 
terior, now to Gallicize, now to Anglicize, and now even 
to Eussianize, himself — in short, the Jesuit of Islam. 
Said Professor Goldwin Smith of the Turks : ^ 

' ' Considering that they have been four centuries settled in 

Europe and in contact with European civilization, their history 

may safely be said to be without a parallel as a pro- 

s w" longed and unchanging exhibition of the vices of 

View barbarism, and above all of barbarian cruelty. A 

fiend, the Turk, when his fanatical and tyrannical 

passions were excited, has always been, and he has always been 

a valiant fiend. The Ottomans, who added some of the most 

hideous pages to the sickening annals of massacre and torture, 

were just as conspicuous for physical courage as those for whom 

our respect is now claimed on that account." 

It requires not only a most sublime independence of his- 
torical records, but also a most peculiar definition of "the 
fittest," to enable one to see in the success of the Turk an 
illustration of "the survival of the fittest." There were 
other and better reasons for the fall of the Eastern Empire. 
The Greek was a civilized man, and not a barbarian, find- 
ing his ideal of manhood in Christ, and Constantine, and 
Chrysostom, and the martyrs for the faith, rather than 
in Mohammed, and Bajazet, and the Janizaries. Although 
he had heroically defended himself for almost a thousand 
years against the hordes of Islam, he had never taken 
naturally to war and conquest. When the fall of Con- 
stantinople drew near, his military power had been weak- 
' Contemporary Review, November, 1877, p. 1065. 



■ INTRODUCTORY. 17 

ened by ages of struggle against adverse circumstances 
and liostile influences. The capture and sack of the city 
by the Crusaders, in 1204, was a terrible blow. For two 
centuries the Turks had harried all Southeastern Europe, 
carrying fire and sword to the very gates of the city ; and 
when the hour of extremity came, political and religious 
jealousy led the West to decline to aid the Greeks and to 
look upon their downfall with satisfaction. ''Had it not 
been," says Dr. Pichler, the learned historian of the schism, 
''for the religious division of East and West, the Turks 
never could have established their dominion in Europe." 

In the light of these facts, it does not require even the 
imaginary Turkish quality of a sublime religious enthus- 
iasm and devotion to account for the career of Islam in the 
Orient. His religion, a blind fanaticism based upon fatalism 
and selfishness ; a bloody spirit of conquest, growing out 
of the belief that the world was made for his exclusive use 
and benefit ; a sublime impudence and intolerance, or, as 
some one by euphemism has called it, a " magnificent in- 
solence," arising out of the teaching of the Hanifites, that 
he alone was the man of Allah, who hates all other men, 
and commands the true believer to hate them ; an insati- 
able lust, finding its motive and development in the sen- 
suality which the Koran makes a chief element of earth 
and heaven — these, added to the natural Turk, made him 
a fiend whenever his passions were roused. All this has 
been true of him from the day when Orkhan established his 
throne in Brusa, early in the fourteenth century, named the 
gate of his palace the Sublime Porte, and founded the 
Janizaries, down to the last of the recent outrages, the echo 
of which is still in the ears of all the world. 

Nor need so much admiration be wasted upon the power 
of the Turk in keeping his hold upon the empire he con- 
quered. The " miserable Byzantines," as 

their detractors have been pleased to call them, . 1;. ^. 

J^ ' Acmevemeiits. 

held Constantinople against all the warlike 



18 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

forces of barbarism for a thousand years ; what marvel if 
the warlike barbarian holds it against his unwarlike neigh- 
bors — thoroughly cowed by the horrors of Ottoman tyranny, 
robbery, butchery and sensuality — for almost half as long ? 
But history warrants the absolute denial of the state- 
ment that the Turk has, by his military prowess, maintained 
his old place in Europe for these four centuries. Even 
with all the advantages of his impregnable position, of the 
finest commercial capital on the globe, and with all the 
prestige of military success, he maintained his military su- 
premacy in Europe for only about two centuries. It ended 
with the disastrous defeat by the heroic Polish leader, John 
Sobieski, before the walls of Vienna, in 1683. Concerning 
it, Schlosser writes : ^ 

"A comparatively new relation between the Christian Powers 
and the empire of the Osmans resulted from the last Tictories of 
the Austrians, and from the complete exclusion of the Turks' 
from Hungary and Transylvania. After the last siege of Vienna, 
the Turks had completely lost the military importance which 
they previously possessed ; for that reason they became, what 
they have since remained, a political machine, which may be 
used against Austria or the waxing power of the Russians." 

So that Turkey has held the anomalous place it now 
holds as a broken and dependent power for almost two 
centuries.^ The Turkish power, from its very nature, 
went into decline when its extended conquests and butch- 
eries were brought to a standstill. To use Viscount Strat- 
ford de Eedcliffe's phrase, " Turkey has been on an inclined 
plane moving downward from that day to the present." 
Everybody knows that Islam has kept its place in Stam- 
boul for the last fifty years, not because the followers of 
the prophet have been so heroic and noble, but because 

1 History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 3, p. 6. 

2 Canon McColl has said : " It is interesting to note how early 
the Mohammedan rulers of Constantinople recognized that their 
rule in Europe was but temporary. They have always buried their 
dead on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus." 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

the principles and policy of the European governments 
have been so utterly cowardly and base. History ruthlessly 
puts this elusive conception of the ''noble Turk" along 
with that of the " noble savage," 

Nor did the Turk win a right to a permanent place in 
European Turkey by any event in his career for the first 
four centuries, or till the Crimean War. 

While history reveals the defects of the Eastern Empire, 
it gives it a unique place in the world, — the place of the 
only Christian nation worth the saving when the Old 
AVorld went down before barbarian invasion in the fifth 
century. The advantages of the position of Byzantium, 
which had attracted the attention of Polybius long before 
Constantine, mark it as " the one spot of the Old World 
best fitted to be the capital of a universal empire." But 
when the dream of universal empire had passed away be- 
fore the barbarian, there was still needed such a convenient 
and impregnable center for the preservation 
of the treasures of learning and Christianity ^^g'^o^id^ 
through the long and stormy period of the 
Dark Ages. Constantine himself began the work of gather- 
ing in the treasures which, for the world's sake, needed to 
be saved,and when the power and tradition of the Papacy had 
reached their height, Constantinople remained, with its 
Greek Scriptures and learning, the forlorn hope of the world, 
— the one spot from which light might possibly irradiate 
the thick darkness fast becoming universal. Says Gib- 
bon : ^ 

" The ecclesiastics presided over the education of the youth; 
the schools of philosophy and eloquence were perpetuated till 
the fall of the emjiire ; and it may be affirmed that more books 
and more knowledge were included within the walls of Constan- 
tinople than could be dispersed over the extensive countries of the 
West." 

1 See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, etc., vol. 6, passim, and Philip 
Smith, Ancient History, vol. 3. 



20 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

To the careless eye, the fall of Constantinople seemed 
what the Turk meant it to be, the death of Christian hope. 
It seemed the fall of Christendom before Islam, It "vvas in 
reality one of those wonderful providences by which all 
human purposes and diplomacy are set at naught and the 
grandest results attained in spite of rulers and nations. 
As has been seen, it scattered the Greek Scriptures and 
Greek learning over all Western Europe. When the Turk 
sat down in the gateway to the East, India, the old soarce 
of wealth, was no longer accessible to the Western nations 
by the way of the Bosporus and the caravan route across 
the desert and down the valley of the Euphrates. The 
search for a new route at once began. The ship took the 
place of the caravan — the ocean of the desert route. In 
a half century, more or less, the great voyagers, Columbus, 
Vasco de Gama, and Magellan, had done, in spite of the 
Turk, their task of opening all the globe with its wealth, 
wheeling Western Europe to the front of the world, and 
bringing in the modern era of enterprise and commerce. 
The cause of the great revolution, therefore, let it be 
distinctly understood, was not " the light that shot from 
Cordova and Bagdad," but the light scattered from the 
burning city of the Constantines, at no less a price than the 
untold sufferings of a noble race conquered and enslaved 
after the most heroic struggle of history, continued through 
a thousand years. 

These vast changes can be set down to the score of the 

Turk only as redemption can be put to the credit of Luci- 

3 p te ded ^^^ ' ^° ^^® Turk must rather be credited 

Right For- the system of slavery, robbery and butchery 
felted. ^j^g^^ j^g introduced and has perpetuated in 
Southeastern Europe. 

The past history of Turkish oppression, with its full 
horrors, will never be written out. Slavs, Eoumanians, 
Armenians, Hellenes have all alike felt these horrors ; the 
last and most sensitive perhaps most deeply. A few facts 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

fi'om tlic story of tlic enslaving of this race, and from the 
general history of the Turkish rule, will be sufficient to 
give some faint conception of the boundless range of such 
facts that cannot be told, and to suggest some lines of 
Turkish barbarity to which attention must be called later 
in this discussion. 

There is a saying reported of the prophet, that " if God 
valued the world at the wing of a fly. He would not allow 
an unbeliever to obtain so much as a drink of 
water from it." Even this contempt, as differ- ^"^arism*''" 
ent as possible from what we understand by 
toleration, has sometimes given the races subject to Islam, 
in times of peace, some of the advantages of toleration ; 
but it has always, when ]\Ioslem greed and lust have been 
excited, made the non-Mohammedan races liable to be 
savagely slaughtered. The Christians in Turkey have 
seen chiefly the latter aspect of this contempt. 

Mohammed II. began with apparent toleration, but 
Gibbon tells us that " the scene was soon changed ; and be- 
fore his departure the hippodrome streamed with the blood 
of his noblest ca|)tives." With what Mr. Gladstone calls 
'' far-sighted cruelty," the leaders, the aristocracy of the 
Greek lands, were completely swept away. To the so-called 
taxation, amounting to robbery, there was added the still 
more terrible exaction of the " children-tribute," the debas- 
ing effects of which are not yet effaced. Eobbery and pir- 
acy were pushed everywhere by land and by sea, property 
and life were everywhere insecure, and at times the coasts 
of Greece became uninhabitable. The chastity of woman, 
from the princess to the peasant, was often the forfeit paid 
for life. The creation of the Phanariots and the career 
of the Janizaries give hints of what was done to degrade 
and destroy. The absolute master and tyrant made him- 
self felt everywhere, down through the four centuries, in 
every form of oppression that Turkish cruelty could invent. 

It would be impossible to enumerate the brutal butcheries 



22 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

with which the Moslems have visited, and are at all times 
liable to visit, the Christians over the Empire. Going back 
of the more recent transactions in Bosnia and Bulgaria, the 
deliberate attempt to assassinate every leading Servian in 
the efEorts to suppress the insurrections under Black George 
and Milosch, and the depopulation of beautiful Scio, are 
but specimens of what the Turk has always been finding 
occasion to do, and of what Christian Europe under the old 
diplomacy permitted him to do almost without protest down 
to the time of the Treaty of Paris. 

But it would be an injustice to two men who rose above 

the Turkish ideas, if not above the Turkish character, 

to pass unnoticed the attempts made by Selim 

''^Refomf ^^^' ^^^ Mahmood II. to introduce military, 
social and civil reforms into the empire. The 
alliance between Solyman the Magnificent and Francis the 
First of France was the first in a series of concessions which 
Viscount de Eedcliffe well says " may fitly be called extra- 
Koranic, and which were gradually made to the necessity 
more and more felt by the Porte of obtaining a less insu- 
lated position as to the States of Christendom.^' Toward 
the close of the last century, Selim III. commenced, in 
the same spirit, the work of internal reform. The attempt 
roused the fanaticism of the Moslems, and cost Selim his 
throne and his life, 

Mahmood II., at a later period, took up the work of 
Selim. It was a struggle of the prince of Turkish butch- 
ers, almost single-handed, with the fiercest and wildest 
outbursts of fanaticism. It really shattered and dismem- 
bered the empire, which was only prevented from fall- 
ing to pieces immediately by the interference of Eussia. 
Mahmood strangled or threw into the Bosporus the family 
of his predecessor, butchered the Janizaries, opened dip- 
lomatic intercourse with the Christian nations, attempted 
the reorganization of the army and the courts, and other 
improvements. The proclamation of Gulhane and the 



INTRODUCTORY. 23 

introdnction of extensive reforms under tlie name of Tan- 
zimat kairieh in 1839, the year of his death, gave earnest 
of his determined purpose. But it was all contrary to the 
spirit of the Turk and the Koran, and the old Turk in his 
fanaticism proved too strong for the young Turk in his 
ambition. Something was accomplished, with the aid of 
a salutary fear of foreign powers, in and around Con- 
stantinople, but its cost was the disintegration of the Otto- 
man Empire, and the experiment demonstrated for that 
time the im|)ossibility of the co-existence of modern prog- 
ress and Turkish rule, — at least without some more powerful 
influence from without. 

History thus leads inevitably to the verdict that the 
Turk brought little of value with him into Southeastern 
Europe ; that he did his best to destroy whatever of value 
was already there ; and that in more than four centuries 
of oppression he has not been the source of any appreciable 
good to the millions of his non-Turkish slaves ! His 
career up to the Crimean War did nothing toward winning 
him a just title to sovereignty. In short, the present cent- 
ury has witnessed the culmination of the Turkish policy, 
as the outcome of the Turkish character, in a long series 
of the most horrible crimes against humanity ever per- 
petrated on the face of the globe — crimes at which the 
world stands aghast — and the years 1894, 1895, 1896 and 
1897 witnessed the worst of them all ! 

As the scenes of the awful drama are further unfolded, 
it will be seen how the course of diplomacy and the in- 
creasing financial pressure upon the Turk have resulted 
in his increased barbarity and atrocity, and it will also ap- 
pear who are principally responsible for it all. It will be 
seen, moreover, that nothing less than a revolution in 
Christendom, and in Turkey through the agency of Chris- 
tendom, can save the remaining Christian subjects of the 
Sultan from still more terrible oppression and butchery, 
or from annihilation. 



24 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

(II.) The Eussian" : His Character and Purposes. 

Eussia^ long the prominent factor in the Eastern Ques- 
tion, has claimed to act the part of deliverer of the enslaved 
Christians. When Europe, largely through the influence 
of the British Grovernment, has decided to leave them to the 
tender mercies of the Turk, Eussia single-handed has 
taken up their cause and, aiming at the maximum of in- 
ternational obligation, has freely poured out her treasure 
and her blood in their behalf. Has the cardinal thing 
with her been, '^How shall the Eussians free these op- 
pressed and suffering brethren who appeal to them for 
help ? " or, " How shall this great step toward the com- 
pletion of the Pan-Slavic empire best be taken '^" Or, 
are the two indissolubly linked together ? What, in short, 
are the purposes and rights of Eussia ? These questions 
can only be answered in the light of Eussian character, 
ideas and conduct. 

The Eussian has been described as a dual character — half 

European and half Asiatic. The representative Eussians, 

the Slavs— about 65,000,000 of the 78,000,- 

Character ^^^ ™ European Eussia, by the recent census, 
are Slavs — belong to the Indo-European family, 
and came from the wilds of Scythia. The name Euss 
(Hebrew Eosch), unfortunately mistranslated in the Eng- 
lish version "the chief Prince," first appears in Ezekiel 
xxxviii. 2, 3, and xxxix. 1, and is the only name of a 
modern nation found in the old Testament.-' The Slavs 
first made their appearance in European history in the 
neighborhood of the Carpathian Mountains, in the fourth 
century, and from that point spread northward to the Bal- 
tic and southward to the Adriatic.^ 

Western notions of the Eussian people are^chiefly derived 
from pen-pictures of the fierce Cossack, and are as repre- 

1 Dean Stanley, The History of the Eastern Church, p. 397. 

2 Max Miiller, Science of Language, First Series, p. 196. 



INTRODUCTOKT. 25 

sentative of Russian character as the Texan cut-throat 
of American. Mr. M. E. Grant Duff asserts that '^he 
inhabitants of Great Eussia, the nucleus of the empire, 
are the most naturally pacific of mankind. '' In this all 
authorities agree. Some are inclined to add to the Eussia 
of the new regime the despotic ideas of the old ; but 
Eussia has been renewing her youth. Herzen, the Eussian 
wit, brought out the striking change and contrast when 
he asked the English why, because they were hostile to the 
old bear, the Eussia of Nicholas, they should be hostile to 
the young bear, the new Eussia, which Nicholas hated 
more heartily than he hated the English. 

There is no comprehension of the Eastern Question nor 
of the national iniquities linked with it, without an un- 
derstanding of the real character and condition of Eussia. 
Such understanding is all the more important from the 
fact, that pretty much everything from Eussia and South- 
eastern Europe that reaches the average man of the outside 
world, passes through the hands and is colored by the 
agents of British diplomacy at Constantinople. Hence, 
in the great crises the facts have almost always been sup- 
pressed or garbled, while the acts and motives of the Eus- 
sian have as commonly been misrepresented. Consider 
then the Eussia of the last forty years. 

The Crimean War proved to be the regeneration of Eussia 
under Alexander II. It is true that none of the diplom- 
atists or sovereigns understood it in that light. 
It was one of the independent moves of Prov--^* '^^^^5^5^*^^ 
idence without the advice or consent of man. 
Czar Nicholas entered into the war by making demand 
upon tlie Turk for the extradition of refugees, and his 
misfortunes brought him to his grave a year before its 
close. Alexander II. ascended the throne March 2, 1855, 
only six months before the fall of Sebastopol, which com- 
pleted the shattering of his army and the annihilation of 
his navy in the Black Sea. A year brought the Treaty of 



26 THE CEIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

Paris, which left himself and his country humiliated and 
bound by most unjust and oppressive restrictions. 

He seems to have taken in the situation with the eye 
of a great statesman, and he began at once the series of 
radical and comprehensive changes that have transformed 
the old Eussia into the new. On the day of his corona- 
tion he ordered four translations of the Bible, by the four 
Universities, into modern Euss, for his people, to be com- 
bined into one by the Holy Synod ; just six years later, in 
1861, he emanci]3ated the serfs ; in 1864, he reconstructed 
the entire judicial system of all the Eussias ; in 1870, he 
threw off the chains with which the Treaty of Paris had 
unjustly fettered his people, and began the reconstruction 
of the army and navy ; in 1877, in response to their ap- 
peal and the generous uprising of the Eussian people, he 
began the war for the deliverance of the Christians of 
Southeastern Europe. It will be seen at a glance that his 
watchword was progress. 

It is obvious that Eussia had been in the past the repre- 
sentative despotism, the soul of the Holy Alliance, in the 
reactionary movement against European free- 

The Liberal f^^^ Alexander the Liberator undertook to 
Movement. 

bring his country into a new position by a 

great liberal movement. He took advantage of the re- 
markable fact, confirmed for us by Mr. Wallace and other 
authorities, that the Eussian people are the most democratic 
people in the world, — and established upon it a govern- 
ment. An administrator of the new leveling school in 
Eussia is said to have declared that his wish was to build 
'' a tower upon a steppe," — that is, he desired to see the 
Imperial Power rising out of a vast democracy. 

The Czar made serf-emancipation the basis of his new 

movement. On the morning of the 3d of March, 1861 — 

the day preceding the inauguration of Presi- 

^of thfserfs'' ^^^^ Lincoln and a year and a half before 

his famous '^^Emancipation Proclamation -•'•'— 



INTKODUCTORY. 27 

there were in Russia, chiefly in European Eussia, twenty- 
two and a half millions of ordinary serfs. At evening of 
that day, to be forever memorable in the annals of free- 
dom, the whole of that vast population had ceased to be 
serfs, and had become free, Not only were they free, but 
the government had clothed the old mir, or communal or- 
ganization, with administrative functions, had provided 
for the pecuniary indemnity of the boyar, or master, and 
had opened the way for each moujik, or freed serf, to be- 
come at once a landed proprietor of from five to twenty- 
five acres, by furnishing him the money, to be returned in 
forty-nine annual payments. According to Mr. Wallace, 
who has given the best account of this whole transaction, 
the work made good progress, — 5,300,000 male peasants 
having in twenty years availed themselves of this method 
of securing lands upward of 50,000,000 acres having 
passed into their hands, and the government advances hav- 
ing in that time aggregated more than $500,000,000. It 
must be remembered, too, before the full grandeur of the 
movement can be understood, that there were 20,000,000 
more living upon the government lands, in very much the 
same condition as the serf ; so that it was an effort to lift 
up more than 40,000,000 of the population to a higher 
plane of freedom and manhood. 

In 18C4 an entirely new judicial system was set in opera- 
tion, formed partly on English but chiefly on French 
models, and even introducing trial by jury in criminal 
cases. It was the chief co-operative agency in securing the 
ultimate full benefits of serf-emancipation. 

Of course, no one who has studied history and read 
human nature — especially in connection with emancipation 
in our own country — will for one moment suppose that 
this great movement — the most enlightened and liberal as 
well as the grandest ever attempted by any monarch — has 
at once transformed Russia into a paradise ; but eye-wit- 
nesses such as Mr. Wallace, Mr. Duff and gentlemen like 



2§ THE CKIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Freeman, and Mr. G-oldwin Smitli, 
who look upon it with the eye of the statesman and his- 
torian, agree in representing the results, even after this 
short lapse of time, as very great and beneficent, and the 
prospect for the future as most encouraging. 

One of the grandest results was that a new national spirit 
took possession of the people. Mr. Freeman saw in the 
war of 1877-8 " emphatically the war of the people." 
There are those who saw in it only the outcome of the Pan- 
Slavic idea, the expression of the consciousness of Eussia 
of her mission to unite all the Slavonian peoples into one 
mighty empire. This was one of the bugbears made use 
of in prejudicing Western Europe against Russia at the 
time of the Russo-Turkish war. So few, however, were 
the radical Slavophils at that time, that Mr. Duff thought 
that it might be said of them, as was said of themselves 
by one of the ablest of the English positivists, that they 
were a stage army, which, marching round and round, ap- 
peared in consequence to be much more numerous than it 
really was. 

Co-operating with the national idea in Eussia is the re- 
ligious idea. No other great nation is so united in any form 
of religion as Eussia has been in the Greek 
^^611^0^*'^ Church, almost from the day when Queen 
Olga made Christianity the religion of her 
realm. The authorities already referred to agree in repre- 
senting .it as a source of national strength and unity in 
various ways : that it has had something to do with the 
gentleness and docility which are so characteristic of a 
large portion of the Eussian people ; that the connection of 
Church and State enormously strengthens the latter for 
all internal purposes ; that the old ecclesiastical connec- 
tion with Constantinople, and the instinctive hostility to 
those who now hold that city, have been a powerful sup- 
port of the State in its wars against the Turk. But trav- 
elers generally agree in representing the "vast majority 



INTKODUCTOEY. 29 

of the Eussian clergy as very little above the peasantry 
amongst wliich they live," and give a very somber view of 
the state of religion and education. 

But turning from the ordinary travelers, often them- 
selves irreligious and seldom seeing beyond the merest sur- 
face of things, we find great regenerating forces at work 
transforming the people of Eussia. Passing over the re- 
forms by Nicon, including the revival of preaching, and 
the transfer of the supreme control of spiritual and ecclesi- 
astical affairs to the Holy Synod by Peter the Great, with 
, the resulting modifications, we are assured 

' by most excellent authority. Dr. Kurtz, for- 
merly Professor of Church History in the University of 
Dorpat,^ that : 

*' The orthodox Church in modern times has elevated itself 
more and more, especially since Alexander I, Theological learn- 
ing was not rare among the higher clergy, and the government 
also provided for the better intellectual culture of the lower 
clergy."' 

Dean Stanley, referring to those ''^who look on the 

Oriental Church merely as the dead trunk, from which all 

sap and life have departed, fit only to be cut 

down," calls attention to the fact that " it is ^^^^ Stanley's 

' Opinion, 

also the aged tree, beneath whose shade the 

rest of Christendom has sprung up, whose roots have 

struck too widely and deeply in its native soil " to give 

place to any other form of religion. He adds : ^ 

" We may reflect with satisfaction that should ever the hour 
come for the reawakening of the churches of the East, there is no 
infallible pontiff at Constantinople, no hierarchy separated from 
the domestic charities of life, to prevent the religious and social 
elements from amalgamating into one harmonious whole. We 
may gratefully remember that there is a theology in the world 
of which the free, genial mind of Chrysostom is still the golden 

1 Church History, vol. 2, p. 403, 

2 History of the Eastern Church, pp. 137-9. 



30 THE CRIME OE* CHRISTENDOM. 

mouthpiece ; a theology in which scholastic philosophy has had 
absolutely no part. . . . But there is a future also for the Church 
of the East. . . . The Eastern Christian has the rare gift of an 
ancient orthodox belief without intolerance and without prosely- 
tism. . . . The Greek race may yet hand back from Europe to 
Asia the light which, in former days, it handed from Asia to 
Europe. The Slavonic race may yet impart by the Volga or the 
Caspian the civilization which it has itself received by the Neva 
and the Baltic." 

He also calls attention to the admirable elements in the 
very structure of the Greek Church that prepare it for a 
wonderful development ; that the nation was converted not 
through the work of the missionary but by the agency of its 
own Prince, and that the clergy have always lived in com- 
parative poverty, dependent on the free offerings, of their 
flocks ; that the Kussian establishment is a combination — 
difficult for the Western mind to understand — of the strict- 
est form of State religion with the widest application of 
the voluntary principle ; and tliat the Scriptures in the 
vernacular have always been accessible.-^ Mr. Gladstone 
has pointed out the connection of the popular services of 
the Eastern Church, rich in Scripture, with the preserva- 
tion of what life remained in the Greek Church in Turkey, 
and the awakening of the Greeks to new life. The same 
influences are at work in Eussia. 

The charge has been repeatedly brought against the 
Greek Church, that, like Rome, it is an intolerant and 

persecuting Church. It is not well grounded, 
but Nationif ^^^^ Stanley emphasizes its tolerance. Mr. 

Duff partly admits it but directs attention to 
the so-called persecutions in Poland proper and in the 
"Western provinces of Russia, and narrates a case, whicl^ 
occurred in 18G5, in which a Russian lady of high char- 
acter " asked, and asked in vain, to be allowed to return 
to St. Petersburg for the purpose of assisting, in her 

1 History of the Eastern Church, p. 419. 



INTEODUCTOET. 31 

capacity of sister of charity, to nnrse tlie sick during the 
outburst of cholera which took place in that jeav." It is 
undoubtedly true, as Mr. Wallace has shown, that the 
Kussian religion is intensely national, that it expects every 
Eussian to be orthodox ; but it is true also that Moham- 
medans, Protestants, and other dissidents from the ortho- 
dox faith, live in the country without molestation, and 
serve in the armies of the Czar. The so-called propagand- 
ism in the Baltic provinces and the persecutions in Poland 
were — as the present Eussian policy in Armenia also is — for 
the purpose of political assimilation rather than of spir- 
itual conversion. The hostility to the Eomisli Church 
has been, like that in Germany, hostility to Jesuitism for 
self-preservation. So the Duke of Argyll shows. Con- 
cerning the insurrection in Poland in 1863-4, and the 
Eussian cruelties in connection with it, it may be said in 
mitigation, if not in defense, that the vast majority of the 
Poles were, by the concession of Karl Blind, entirely op- 
posed to the insurrection, and the Democratic Warsaw 
Committee who managed it consisted of twelve members, 
mostly very young men. While we sympathize deeply with 
the wrongs of Poland, may not the protection of the people 
of Poland have required severe measures against the ram- 
pant radicalism of such Polish patriots ? 

But the chief hope of the Greek Church is in the great 
Bible movement inaugurated on the coronation day of the 
Liberator. It received its inspiration from 
that honored American to whom Europe owes ^ ^^^^® 
so much, — Dr. Eobert Baird. Of the origin 
of the work of introducing the Bible among the people, 
during the reign of Nicholas, and of the subsequent closing 
of the Bible house by Nicholas, in consequence largely of 
his shattered faith in England, the story is a sad one. Of 
the progress of the later movements under Alexander, the 
late Eev. W. H. Bidwell, so long editor of the Eclectic 
Magazine, gave, some time since, an interesting account. 



32 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

The first edition of 20,000 copies of the Gospels and the 
Acts was speedily exhausted. The noble empress entered 
into the work ; while ladies of high character established 
depositories and superintended the work. A general of 
rank ordered a thousand copies for the men under his com- 
mand. The work of translation and revision was com- 
pleted under the auspices of the Holy Synod, and the Bible 
was scattered throughout the Russias, superseding the old 
Slavic or Bulgarian version, by Cyril and Methodius. As 
illustrating the progress of the work, Mr. Bidwell wrote, 
that in 1876 the circulation in Northern Russia amounted 
to 264,227 copies, while for 1877 it amounted to 247,656 
copies, and that in Southern Russia for three years the cir- 
culation averaged 80,000 copies annually. He likewise 
called attention to the efforts of the Czar in educating his 
people, including the establishment of from eight to ten 
thousand schools.^ The late Dr. Schaff', writing of this 
Bible movement,^ quotes a recent writer (Mr. Hepworth 
Dixon) as saying : 

"Except in New England and in Scotland, no people in the 
world, so far as they can read at all, are greater Bible-readers 
than the Russians." 

Taking all the facts into account, we think that the 
anticipations of Dean Stanley for the future of Russia bid 
fair to be realized. The seeds of intelligence and religion 
are being sown broadcast, and who can doubt that there 
will be a mighty and beneficent harvest ? 

Their religion has led the Russians to look upon them- 
selves as the divinely called protectors and defenders of 

Defender of ^^^ Christians of the Greek Church in Tur- 

Greek Chris- key. This is the key to much of the conduct 

tians. ^£ Russia as seen in the history of the modern 

centuries. Clemens Petersen, writing on this point, says : ^ 

1 The Bible and Alexander II. 

2 Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, vol. 2, p. 673. 

3 Ibid, vol. 3, p. 1751. 



INTRODUCTOEY. 33 

"Ivan III., the Great (1462-1505) . . . married a princess of the 
imperial house of Constantinople, now in exile, adopted the 
double eagle in his escutcheon, and assumed the title of lord of 
all the Russians, and under him became visible that line of policy 
which subsequently has run like a thread througli the whole 
history of the Russian empire. To the Russian people and their 
princes Constantinople was the sole representative of civilized 
life, the model after which they shaped themselves — the source 
whence thej^ drew their religious creed and their military organ- 
ization, their civil institutions and the comforts and ornaments 
of private life, their dishes and wines, their silks and fasliions, 
their architecture and literary tastes ; and when Constantinople 
fell into the hands of the Turks (in 1453), the prince of Moscow, the 
Czar of all the Russians, felt himself an heir and the avenger of 
the Byzantine empire. This idea fills to this very daj^ the hearts 
of the Russian princes and the Russian people as a duty and as 
an ambition ; and there is only one means of keeping them away 
from Constantinople, the Dardanelles, and Asia Minor — namely, 
to make the king of Greece emperor of Byzantium. " 

Writing recently on " The Eastern Question/^ Madame 
Novikoff sets forth clearly the Eussian idea : " ^ 

" Russians are nothing if they are not patriotic, but before 
they are Russians they are Christians. As my brother. General 
Alexander Kireeff , recently wrote in an article of 
the Nouvelle Revue (September, 1895) : ' I am the -y^gta vie ^' 
son of my church before I am the son of my coun- 
try. I am first of all A Greek Orthodox, afterwards I am a 
Russian.' This is the outcome of all our history. 

" The first conception which a Russian has of the human beings 
in the midst of whom he is born is that they are brothers. He 
does not call theni fellow-citizens. He does not address them as 
fellow-coimtrymen. Neither does he call them ' Russians ' in his 
everyday plain speech, which embodies his simple sense of things 
as they are ; he calls them ' Brother ' (' Brat,' ' Bratzi '), He did 
this long before the French Revolution popularized the doctrine 
of fraternity. He learnt it in the Church. But it was not ' the 
brotherhood of men ' ; it was the brotherhood of Christians. ' The 
brotlierhood of all men ' is a phrase ; the brotherhood of Chris- 
tians is a fact. That is a somewhat important distinction. No 
doubt many Christians are unbrotherly ; but all Christians, at 

1 Nineteenth Century, December, 1895, p. 1001. 



34 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

least of the Greek Orthodox rite, recognize the reality of their 
brotherhood both in their religion and in their politics. . . . The 
Russian, therefore, never regards himself as primarily a citizen 
of the Russian State. He is always, and first and foremost, a 
Greek Orthodox, and as such he is a member of a much wider 
and greater, more ideal, realm than any merely secular com- 
munity. . . . 

" The Greek Orthodox world, that is our Fatherland, and all 
Greek Orthodox are our brethren. The Greek Orthodox Churches 
of Bulgaria, of Greece, of Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, etc., 
may be united by ties hardly perceptible, but you cannot help 
seeing and feeling them in times of united dangers or trials ; 
and among all the Greek Orthodox Churches there is the most 
absolute recognition of this fact, that it is from Russia alone 
that some effectual help can come to deliver them from their 
tribulations. 

' ' If this fact be borne in mind you will perhaps be able to 
realize the reason why Russians never could acquiesce, except 
under protest, in the presence of a Roman Catholic prince on the 
throne of Bulgaria. Remember Bulgaria is a Greek Orthodox 
community ; she has been liberated by the sacrifices in blood 
and money by Russian Orthodox armies. To see on the throne 
of Bulgaria a man who by his creed may be the deadly enemy of 
the Greek Orthodox Church cannot be otherwise than distasteful 
to Russia." 

Eussia therefore naturally claimed to be the protector 
and patron of the Greek Christians in the Turkish em- 
pire. For centuries she regarded it as her duty and mis- 
sion to deliver Constantinople from the oppression of the 
Turk. There seemed to he every reason for hoping that 
a large development along the line of freedom and en- 
lightenment would result from the germs of progress every- 
where bursting into life. 

But it is necessary to consider reactionary Eussia, since 

Alexander II., and her ambitions. In the nature of 

things, something of reaction, where there 

^ "^Eussia"^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^® outset so much of promise and hope 

and accomplishment, was inevitable. Various 

causes operated in producing it. Indeed, the reaction was 



INTKODXJCTOBT, 35 

already on before tlie death of Alexander II, It was a 
herculean task to lift uj) a hundred million people, — a 
task too great for even so great a ruler as Alexander. The 
emancipation of the serfs brought the Czar into antag- 
onism with the aristocratic classes in Russia, and had to 
be carried out in spite of them. The system of democratic 
local government introduced was a disappointment — in- 
deed could not have been otherwise — since it had to deal 
with so dense a mass of ignorance. Out of depraved human 
nature came Nihilism as the product of the freedom and 
privileges granted the people, and proposed a death-grapple 
with all government human and divine. A strong hand 
was required in dealing with these things. In pushing the 
vast and complicated administrative affairs a great bureau- 
cracy grew up and extended itself over the empire. 

So the death of Alexander at the hands of the Nihilists 
was one of the saddest events in history ; for he alone of all 
men seemed capable of dealing satisfactorily with the 
grave questions of Russian progress and diplomacy. It 
was reported that at the very time of his assassination he 
had prepared and was about to issue a liberal constitution. 
He might have carried out such a difficult enterprise ; but 
the deathblow brought that and everything of its kind to 
an end for the time being, and increased tenfold the tide 
of reaction. Moreover, Russian ambition had apparently 
received a new impulse. Napoleon had long before |)re- 
pared the way for it, when he forged the 
so-called " Will of Peter the Great." It was " ^f Vrelf"'' 
the fourteenth injunction of this will, that 
may well have roused Russian ambition. It is as follows : 

" Approach as near as possible to Constantinople and towards 
the Indies. He who reigns at Constantinople will be the real sov- 
ereign of the world, and, with that object in view, provoke con- 
tinual wars with Turkey and with Persia ; establish dockyards* in 
the Black Sea ; get possession of the shores of that Sea as well as 
those of the Baltic, those two things being necessary for the ulti- 



36 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

mate success of the project ; hasten the decadency of Persia, 
penetrate as far as the Persian gulf, re-establish the former trade 
of the Levant by appropriating Syria, and, if possible, extend 
the power of Russia to the Indies, which are the Emporium of 
the World." 

So runs the fourteenth injunction contained in the so- 
called "Will/' a famous document described in the 
" Memoire sur la Chevaliere d'Eon,'' as a copy of the plan 
for compassing European supremacy, left by Peter the 
Great for the successors on the throne of Russia, and 
alleged to have been deposited in the archives of the Palace 
of Peterhoff, jiear St. Petersburg. It was Napoleon I. 
who first made public this instrument, when on the point 
of embarking on his Eussian campaign, and it has been 
very generally denounced as a forgery of his own, and its 
existence in the Eussian archives has been positively denied 
by the Emperor Alexander. Eorgery as it doubtless is, it 
was no inappropriate introduction to the history of an 
eventful year, and it may have had much to do with 
making place for larger ambitions in the hearts of the 
later Czars. 

Moreover it has become abundantly manifest in the pass- 
ing of the years, that some of these very things that 
Napoleon craftily suggested in order to preju- 
E^^sir^** dice Europe against Eussia, are indeed neces- 
sities to the progress, if not to the continued 
existence, of that Empire. It has become obvious that the 
free passage of the Bosporus is absolutely essential to future 
Eussian development. Still further, a nation that within 
a century advanced its frontiers almost five hundred miles 
toward Stamboul, almost nine hundred toward Berlin and 
Vienna, and more than a thousand toward India, may 
perhaps well arouse something of fear" in the neighboring 
naffcions. Those who have dwelt almost exclusively on 
these traditional ideas are suspicious of the Czar, and 
accuse him of always having in view territorial aggrandize- 



INTEODUCTOKY. 37 

ment and selfish ends rather than the interests of Chris- 
tianity and hnmanity. 

Nor can it be denied that there are facts that seem to 
justify their suspicions. The breaking of the shackles 
imposed by the Treaty of Paris, and the reorganization of 
the army and navy, can here only be adverted to as steps 
in the progress of Russia in asserting her place in the 
European world of the future. When the measures of 1870 
were completed, the army, as shown by the London Times 
of December 4, 1876, reached a total of 1,945,000 men. 
The removal of the great naval arsenal of the south from 
the indefensible Sebastopol to Nikolaieif on the river Bug, 
at a point some distance from its mouth, and easily made 
inaccessible to the navies of all the world, while giving to 
Russia every advantage for defense by her land forces, pre- 
pared for the work, by the Grand Duke Constantino at 
the head of the naval authorities, of reconstructing the" 
navy with the aid of the newest lights. What did all this 
mean, if not an aggressive future ? 

It is also constantly alleged that the course of Russia has 
always shown that she is not to be trusted. When the 
Franco-Prussian war broke out, she gave notice to the 
Powers of Europe that imposed the Treaty of Paris upon 
her, that she felt compelled to deviate from its stipulations, 
and keep a fleet of sufficient capacity in the Black Sea. 
That was pronounced in many quarters a high-handed and 
defiant act, making revelation of ambitious plans for terri- 
torial aggrandizement. But it cannot be denied that the 
Turk had violated every pledge made in connection with 
that treaty ; so that Russia was already morally released 
from obligation to regard it longer. She simply took an 
opportune moment for making the announcement. 

This brings forward another question : What are the just 
rights of Russia in Southeastern Europe ? Or has she 
none as against the Powers that placed restrictions ujoon 
her ? . Even if Turkey had not broken the Treaty of 



38 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Paris, on what grounds was Eussia bound to keep it ? She 
regarded her exclusion from the Black Sea as a high- 
handed outrage. It was such in the light of correct moral 
principles. Ostensibly it was done to protect Turkey ; 
really it was done by two great naval powers to annihilate 
practically the naval power of Eussia, who was feared as a 
rival. Great Britain already held almost every great stra- 
tegic point on the globe — the great passing and crossing 
places of commerce — and was then reaching out after Egypt, 
and the Bosporus and the Euphrates valley. But the 
Eussian navy must be excluded from the Black Sea, and 
a power unfriendly to her and friendly to Great Britain 
must be sustained in Constantinople, and 12,000,000 or 

15,000,000 of Christians must be held in slavery 
^ View^^'^ to keep Eussia helpless. Beautiful morality, 

certainly ! The case was justly and forcibly 
' put by General George B. McClellan : ^ 

" Cut off from the open highway of the ocean by the rigorous 
winter of the north, and to the south by a closing of the Bosporus, 
almost as effectual as when, in prehistoric times, no Bosporus 
existed, she has been suspected of the design of forcing her way 
to the sea, and thus gaining a free and untrammeled outlet for 
the productions of the vast regions she controls. Could we for 
a moment imagine our Atlantic ports hermetically sealed by 
ice during the greater part of the year, and the lower Missis- 
sippi under foreign rule, we might, perhaps, be able to answer 
the question as to how long we would permit the control of New 
Orleans by another Power ? " 

Morally speaking, Eussia was Just as much bound by 
that Treaty as the man waylaid and robbed is bound to the 
robber. It was proper that when the announcement of the 
abrogation of the treaty had been made, Alexander should 
begin his preparation to vindicate the national honor against 
his adversaries of the robber morality. Nor is it any wonder 
that a great nation should feel deeply, and remember long, 

I JTorth American Review, July and August, 1877, p. 38. 



INTKODUCTOEY. 39 

and resent strongly sncli a humiliation, and take measures 
to prevent its recurrence. That was doubtless the meaning 
of the new Eussian military system. That too was doubt- 
less the meaning of the fact that the impregnable NikolaiefE 
so rapidly replaced the indefensible Sebastopol as the great 
arsenal of the south. These things were dictated by the 
law of self-preservation. 

These questions of right have got to be settled sooner or 
later. By the plainest principles of interna- 
tional law, Eussia rather than Great Britain ^^^sias 
' Rights, 

has a right to the Black Sea and to a friendly 

power — a Christian Turkey or Greece — if not a capital, on 
the Bosporus. She will undoubtedly assert that right in 
time, and there can be no settlement of the Eastern Ques- 
tion by any scheme that either ignores or denies her just 
claims in this regard. The most astute diplomacy of the 
European nations will assuredly prove powerless in the 
struggle against destiny in this matter. And Eussia's ambi- 
tion for a great outlet for commerce and a center of power 
on the distant Pacific coast is just as certainly to be real- 
ized, for this too is a necessity to the life and progress of 
what is in many respects the greatest nation on the globe. 
And her ambition too for a great commercial outlet by way 
of the Persian Gulf. 

But whatever may be said of the ambitions of Eussia, it is 
certain that in the legitimacy of their origin and the right- 
eousness of their prosecution they will compare not unfav- 
orably with those of Great Britain, her chief accuser. And 
if Eussia — contrary to the protestations of her greatest 
Emperors, to which we elsewhere call attention — has all 
along had designs on Constantinople, coveting it as her 
future capital, she has certainly exercised a very remarkable 
self-restraint in prosecuting her purpose. When she made 
the Peace of Adrianople, in 1829, there was nothing to 
hinder her from occupying Constantinople. When she made 
the armistice of San Stef ano, in 1878, she was in similar posi- 



40 THE CEIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

tion ; and yet she was content to stop in lier victorions 
career with making provision for the freedom and safety 
of the Greek and Armenian Christians of Turkey. 

But were the ambitions of Eussia as great, the selfishness 
of her ends as pronounced, and the treachery of her diplo- 
, macy as consummate, as her enemies assume 

' or assert that they are, still history challenges 
the world to show any great positive betterment in the 
condition of the Christian subjects of the Sublime Porte 
that is not due directly or indirectly to Russia. This will 
be made abundantly clear by the facts that are to be 
brought out in the course of this discussion. But what is 
still more to the point is the indisj^utable fact, that what 
she has done has been done in response to the appeal of the 
oppressed and helpless Christians to save them from the 
Turkish butcher, and done too at an immense sacrifice of 
money and life. Let it also be further noted that the 
course of Russia from the time of Nicholas down has been 
in accordance with the most frank and outspoken views and 
purposes, — in striking contrast with the sinuous and treach- 
erous diplomacy of the Great Powers that have always been 
forward to accuse her of insincerity and double-dealing. 

In short, history proves that among the governments of 
Europe, the Russian is the only one that, up to date, has 
ever shown any genuine sympathy with the Christians of 
the Turkish Empire, or afforded them any real succor. 

(III.) Great BRiTAi]sr — Her Character and Course. 

It is not necessary to dwell upon this theme at any great 
length. Much of what might be said here will naturally 
be brought out in the progress of this discussion. We can 
here only characterize the English nature and aim in a 
most general way. 

The Two Englands — Commercial and Christian. 

From the days of the Norman Conquest, England has 



INTRODUCTORY. 41 

had two phases of character and of thought and two sets 
of desires and purposes — the Saxon and the 
Norman — perpetually struggling for suprem- tiands "' 
acy. She has had her Wickliffs and Wilber- 
forces, her Lollards and Puritans and Evangelicals, and 
her Bonners and Lauds, her men of apostolic earnestness 
and zeal, and her roysterers and ritualists, and her would- 
be inquisitors. There has been the frank, free, generous, 
missionary. Christian, Liberal England, ever foremost in 
the work of evangelizing all the world ; and the scheming, 
despotic, selfish, commercial, Jesuitical, Tory England, 
always pushing on in the search for wealth and self-aggran- 
dizement at the expense of all the world. The two to- 
gether — Commercial England and Christian England — 
have made the English the colonizing, cosmopolitan race 
of the modern ages, — what the Greek was to the ancient 
world, and vastly more than that. 

These two elements have wrought together in extending 
the dominion of English thought round the globe, — the 
one, always in the van in bearing the Bible and Christian 
civilization, has given Christian England the first place in 
the hearts of men ; the other, always leading in the Ma- 
chiavellian policy which has so largely controlled the course 
of the empire, pushing the wars of conquest, the opium 
wars, the selfish and heartless intrigues, as in our Civil 
War and in the Eusso-Turkish War, has made the Govern- 
ment of Great Britain an offense to the world, and, as 
her own great Journals recently averred, left her without a 
friend among the nations. The one is represented by the 
Livingstones and Shaftesburys and Brights and Gladstones 
and Argylls ; the other by the Palmerstons and Derbys 
and Beaconsfields and Salisburys. The one is the England 
of Christianity, the other the England of Diplomacy. 
They have in common the one idea of making conquest 
of the world ; they differ in other things toto ccelo, for the one 
desires it for God and the other for greed. 



42 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

The eyes of both Englands have long been steadfastly 
fixed on the Orient. AVith what different motives can be 
better understood in the light of the sketch just given. 

In the capture of Constantinople by the Turk, in 1453, 
is to be found, as already suggested, the historic reason for 
the commercial supremacy of the English race in the 
modern world. That event, in wheeling Christendom 
about, brought England to the front in just the position 
to command the carrying trade of the world — made it, as 
Herschel phrases it, " the terrene centre of the globe.'' 
The race, as it at present exists — with its six great con- 
tinental centers ; with its grasp upon all the chief strategic 
points over the globe, the passages and transits, the en- 
trances and exits, of the nations ; with its commerce pene- 
trating and its navy claiming control over all seas — dates 
the beginning of its wonderful develoijment from the 
establishment of the Ottoman in Europe. Its past career 
has led the England of the diplomatists to think the rights 
of all men subordinate to " British interests," i. e. to the 
extension of British control and commerce.' Eegardless 
of the rights of humanity, England must control the Bos- 
porus, and the Euphrates valley, and the Suez Canal ; for 
upon these things the Eastern commerce of England is 
conceived to depend. Such is the present view of these 
men, boldly proclaimed and advocated by Ministers of State 
and able writers in the Reviews. In the pursuit of 
'^British interests," economical and political, the diplo- 
matist has shown a disregard for the law of God and the 
rights of man, an absolute moral darkness, difficult to 
parallel in the annals of the pagan world. 

John Euskin's Years ago, we were struck with John Ruskin's 
Estimate. ^ ' • • « -n ■ i 

estimate of the morals and religion of English 

economists and politicians, presented in his incisive style : ^ 

"The entire naivete and undisturbed imbecility with which 
I found them declare that the laws of the devil were the only 
1 Modern Painters, vol. 5, p. 363. 



INTRODUCTOET. 43 

practicable ones, and that the laws of God were merely a form 
of poetical language, passed all that I had ever heard or read of 
mortal infidelity." 

Perhaps in no previous English history did this prac- 
tical infidelity ever take such entire possession of the 
government as it has taken in the period since the begin- 
ning of the Greek struggle for independence ; certainly in 
no other quarter has it had such full sweep and awful 
illustration as in connection with the Eastern Question. 
This will appear from the sketches of the 
successive crises. There is space here barely ^"^^^^ ^^^' 
to indicate some instances of the special dis- 
regard of God and righteousness in connection with these 
crises. When the Greeks, aided by the accident of ISTavarino, 
had struggled on till their hour of triumph. Great Britain 
was the leader in establishing the narrow boundaries that 
have kept Greece from meaning anything on the map of 
Europe, and in remanding to Turkish slavery the Greek 
population all across Turkey, and that to prevent the 
weakening of the Ottoman Empire. When Eussia claimed 
her treaty-right to protect the Christian subjects of the 
Turk, Great Britain precipitated the Crimean War, which 
left the Christians helpless and friendless in their slavery, 
while making Turkey one of the acknowledged Powers in 
Europe. When twenty years and more later Eussia under- 
took the championship of the Christians in Turkey, in the 
great Slavic crisis, and in the Treaty of San Stef ano wrote 
a charter of freedom that took in Greek and Armenian 
Christians alike. Great Britain stepped in with her objec- 
tions, and succeeded in substituting the Treaty of Berlin, 
remanding Macedonians and Armenians to Turkish des- 
potism, and, by her iniquitous secret treaties with the Czar 
and the Sultan, secured control of Cyprus, shut out the 
other Powers from interfering in Armenia, bound herself 
to protect the Turk from interference and coercion by 
taking Cyprus as a pledge, and prepared the way for steal- 



44 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

ing Egypt and gaining a footing in the Euphrates ronte 
to India. And now once more, after less than another 
score of years, she has effectually carried oat the Beacons- 
field policy, and compelled Christendom to look on and 
let the Turk alone in his work of robbing and butchering 
a noble race ! All this to the infinite shame of treacher- 
ous, conscienceless, godless, commercial, Jesuitical, Nor- 
man, Tory England which is now temporarily "official 
England ! " And vastly worse than all this it would have 
been — as will be shown — but for the successive moral move- 
ments in which conscienced. Christian, Anglo-Saxon, 
Liberal England has from time to time partially made its 
protests heard ! 

(IV.) Other Eaces ai^d Complicatiojsts. 

It is not necessary to consider in detail the character and 
aims of the other Powers of Europe, as they have only a 
secondary place and a subordinate interest in the Eastern 
Question. Germany and Italy are not directly concerned 
in the partition of the Turkish Empire. The part played 
by Erance in deciding the treatment accorded to the Chris- 
tians by the Turk will appear incidentally in the progress 
of the discussion. That republic can scarcely be said to 
have any far-reaching governmental aims, such as are at- 
tributed to Great Britain and Eussia, in connection with 
the Sultan's domain. Austria-Hungary is perhaps the 
most directly interested, as she is doubtless exceedingly 
desirous of securing Salonica as an outlet for her com- 
merce to the great world from which she has always been 
practically shut out ; but her power and infiuence in the 
councils of Europe will probably be somewhat limited in 
the final solution of the problems involved, unless in case of 
a crisis her armies should sweep down across the Balkan 
region to secure the coveted prize. Neverthfeless it may 
not be too much to say that she has a natural right to this 



INTRODUCTOEY. 45 

open doorway to the South, a right that must ultimately 
be accorded her, as must also the right of way out by the 
Danube, if she continues to exist. 

The Greek and Armenian races will receive special con- 
sideration in connection with the successive providential 
movements towards the final solution of the problems in- 
volved in the Eastern Question. 

The jealousies and ambitions of all the Powers and races 
have entered as a constant factor into the always intricate 
and usually iniquitous diplomacy that has had 
as its chief aim the prevention of the only right ^j^^ „y^ 
solution of the problems involved in the East- 
ern Question. Some of the phases of that diplomacy have 
taken shape in well-known phrases behind which the so- 
called Powers of Europe have carried on their diplomatic 
juggling in betraying and cursing the Christians of the 
Turkish Empire all through the century. The mutual 
jealousies of the nations have led them to insist that the 
" Balance of Power " must be preserved. For this end 
Turkey has been kept in existence, and the Christians often 
remanded to slavery even after they had been freed. The 
"Balance of Power ^^ led to the emphasizing of the "in- 
tegrity of the Ottoman Empire, ^^ and out of that has come 
the struggle of the Powers against righteousness and 
Providence to keep the Empire intact. The increasing 
wickedness of the struggle has appeared in the oppression 
and agony to which it has subjected the Christians of Tur- 
key, and its increasing futility in the perpetual paring 
down of the Empire until it is only a fragment of what it 
once was. All this has made prominent the recent so-called 
" Concert of Europe,^' a phrase that corruption has changed 
to the worst, so that it has come to mean, as Mr. Gladstone 
has said, ^'^the concealment of dissents, the lapse into 
generalities, and the settling down upon negations at junc- 
tures when duty loudly called for positive action. ^^ And 
so in this '^Concert "of disagreement the Powers have 



46 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

stood by and seen the Turk carry on his wholesale bntch- 
eries for several years, without so much as lifting a fingei 
to protect the helpless Christians. And through all this 
juggling with the " balance of power '^ and the " integrity 
of the Ottoman Empire" and the ''^Concert of Europe/^ 
the immense difference between " Christian Europe" and 
" Official Europe," and especially in the recent crisis be- 
tween " Christian England " and " Official England," has 
been coming out more and more clearly, while the absolute 
powerlessness thus far of the Christian peoples and senti- 
ment of Europe in the struggle with the Governments has 
seemed well-nigh demonstrated. It is easy to see that the 
only hope of " Christian Europe " in connection with the 
Eastern Question, in this death-grapple with " Official 
Europe " with its potent engine of militarism, lies in the 
direction of the " Forward Movement" lately inaugurated, 
but is attainable only through some interposition of Prov- 
idence such as those from which the only relief has come 
in the past. It will be seen that there is no depth of vil- 
lainy, no abyss of crime, no extreme of inhumanity, from 
which " Official Europe " or even " Official England " has 
ever shrunk back. 

It is natural therefore that, starting with the Greek 

conflict, the past seventy-five years should have brought 

ever-increasing complications and ever-deep- 

Stages m the gj^i^^ crime, until at present the extermina- 
Movement. » ' , .-"^ . 

tion of an entire Christian race, in fact of all 

the Christians in the Turkish Empire, seems to be immi- 
nent. It is necessary for the present purpose to consider 
somewhat in detail the principal stages in the diplomatic 
and providential movement. These stages have been : 

(1) The Greek Eevolution, inaugurating the movement 
toward freedom. 

(2) The Crimean "War, wresting from Eussia her treaty- 
right as protector of the Christians and making Turkey 
one of the Powers, but incidentally regenerating Eussia. 



INTRODUCTOKY. ' 47 

(3) The Slavic Crisis of 1877-78, and The Ensso-Turkish 
War, resulting from the spontaneous uprising of a great 
race in defense of the Christians, but having its work 
of emancipation balked and partially undone by British 
diplomacy. 

(4) The present Crisis, beginning with the Armenians, 
reaching the Greeks, and promising to become general, 
having as its aim on the part of the Turk the extinction of 
the Christians in European and Asiatic Turkey, and the 
absolute independence of the Sublime Porte in the oppres- 
sion of its Christian subjects. 

Something of the horrid details of the crimes that have 
accompanied these great movements needs to be brought 
out, in order to show that this continuance of 
oppression and the periodical recurrence of ^^ails* ^' 
massacres are in consequence of the settled 
policy of the Turk, due partly to his consciousness that he 
is dying out, and that these are the only means of retain- 
ing his hold a little longer in the Orient, partly to the ever- 
increasing pressure for revenue to enable him to continue 
to play the part of the idle and shiftless Turk, living upon 
the work of his Christian subjects, and an ever-decreasing 
area from which to exact that revenue. It needs to be 
brought out as well in order to rouse the Christian world, 
if possible, to some sense of its responsibility for the pres- 
ent state of things. 



CHAPTER 11. 
THE GREEK RE\^OLUTION. 

More closely identified with the whole Eastern Question, 
and more profoundly interested in it, than any of the great 
European Powers, is the Greek race. 

In the subjection and enslaving of that race the Eastern 
Question had its origin. In the opening struggle for its 
solution, the Greek, with his patriotism and heroism and 
love of freedom, was the chief agent, evoking the sympathy 
of the civilized world, though baffled and balked by the 
'^'^most Christian ^^ of the so-called Christian Powers. It 
looks very much as though the unquenchable spirit of 
Greek freedom and heroism- — in spite of the so-called 
Christian Powers that have been and are still enacting 
" The Crime of Christendom," supported by tens of mil- 
lions of so-called Christian soldiers — were yet to open the 
way to hope and deliverance for the suiJering and unspeak- 
ably wretched millions of Christians in the Empire of the 
" Great Assassin." The Greek, with his glorious past, his 
heroic struggles, his grievous sufferings and wrongs, and 
his noble aspirations, deserves a brief consideration in 
connection with the Eastern Question, to helj) to the 
better understanding of the later phases of the struggle 
of the Christians of Turkey with the Turk and the 
Powers. 

The Greek Revolution gave occasion for the first moral 
blunder of the Great Powers of Europe, in sustaining Tur- 

48 



THE GREEK EEVOLUTION. 49 

key as against Greece, for wliicli the responsibility belonged 
largely to England. 



I. The Geeek Race ajstd Fate. 

The past glories of the Greek race invest its modern his- 
tory with an interest that attaches to no other people. 
It is one of the saddest facts of history that it pgrMy of 
was Western Christendom that began the work "Western 
of the dismemberment and destruction of the Cliristendom. 
Eastern Empire and had much to do with the continuance 
of that work. ^'^That great buccaneering expedition 
which is commonly called the Fourth Crusade (1204)," 
says Eev. H. F. Tozer/ '' is certainly one of the most dis- 
graceful transactions of history ; . . . that a Christian 
force assembled for the purpose of fighting the infidels 
should turn its arms against the most important Christian 
city of the time is an act of unparalleled baseness ; nor can 
anything be conceived more deliberately mean than the 
treaty by which the spoil of the empire was partitioned be- 
forehand between the nations who took part in the attack." 
From the capture and sack of Constantinople by this cru- 
sade the Eastern Empire never recovered. '' It was then 
broken into a number of separate fragments, and though 
some of these recovered their cohesion, and the end did 
not arrive for two centuries and a half, yet the strength of 
the system was gone, and paralysis crept more and more over 
the enfeebled frame," The parts became separate Latin 
kingdoms. Even when Michael Palseologus founded the 
last dynasty that ruled the Greek empire from Constanti- 
nople (1261), the power of the empire was feeble and its 
extent limited, and its fall before the Turk became only 
a question of time. 

In the centuries that followed the capture of Constan- 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 11, Article Greece, p. 109, 
4 



60 THE CEIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

tinople in 1453 the Greek people were largely exiled or 
exterminated from that city, and their affairs 
' were mixed up with those of Ottomans, Ven- 
etians, the Knights of St. John, Austrians, Russians, and 
others. During that time they appear on the pages of his- 
tory only as it is related of them that they were butchered 
and exterminated or sold into slavery. Dr. Donaldson 
gives a graphic general summary of their dreadful suffer- 
ings from all quarters and nationalities, in those dreary 
centuries when even hope almost died out of the Greek 
heart : ^ 

"The notable fact in Greek history during these ages is the 
disappearance and apparent destruction of the nation. Whoever 
might hold the supreme power in Greece the Greeks were sure 
to be the sufferers. When the Turks spread their conquests from 
Constantinople on to the rest of the empire, every capture of a 
city was followed by the slaughter of the able-bodied men and 
the carrying off of the women and children to the harem or slave 
market. And the Western Christians were not a whit more ten- 
der than the Ottomans. The Venetians were wroth with the 
Greeks, because they did not acknowledge the Pope, and in the 
island of Crete perpetrated the most abominable barbarities on 
the innocent population. The Turks punished the Greeks because 
they submitted to the Venetians, and the Venetians punished 
them because they submitted to the Turks. Moreover, in these 
times the ^gean was infested by pirates who, whether Turks or 
Italians or Greeks, had no mercy on the peaceful inhabitants of 
the mainland. Human life was disregarded, and men and women 
were of value only in so far as they were saleable articles in the 
slave market. If one were to enumerate all the instances in 
which historians tell us of the utter destruction or transference of 
the Greek population, a vivid idea might be presented of how 
terribly hard were the sufferings of the Greek people. We have 
to add to this record of destruction that vast masses of the people 
removed to Italy or Sicily or some other place of refuge. Almost 
all the famous families that ruled the islands of the -^gean es- 
caped from them when they were attacked by the Turks. The 
Knights of St. John, for instance, left Rhodes to find a final set- 

I Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 11, p. 109t 



THE GEEEK KEVOLUTION. 61 

tlement in Malta. Among the number who thus left their native 
land were nearly all the learned men, who sought in the West a 
refuge from Turkish rule, and opportunities for the pursuit of 
learning." 

It seems a marvel that the Greek people survived notwith- 
standing all these destructive agencies ; a still greater 
marvel that they should ever again have 
dreamed of attaining to freedom. That they ^^"'""^•^"^ ^'^''" 
did so was doubtless due to many causes, at 
which we can barely hint. The Turks early saw that the 
differences between themselves and the Greeks were ir- 
reconcilable. Only a summary statement can be given 
drawn from the Encyclopedia Britannica^ and other 
sources. 

" There was no hope of amalgamating the two races. The 
Turks could only convert or exterminate the Christians. They 
did not venture to dream that they could convert all the Greeks 
by persuasion, and forcible conversion after the age of twelve 
was forbidden by the Koran. The only other alternative was 
extermination, and one of the sultans came to the resolution to 
destroy every Christian. But the Turks saw that such a policy 
was ruinous to themselves. Every Christian paid a poll-tax from 
which every Turk was exempt. The Christians cultivated the 
lands for the benefit of the Turks. The Christians were the 
drudges of the Turks. The next best thing to extermination then 
was to get as much out of the Christians as possible while coming 
as little as possible into personal contact with them. This was 
the plan adopted." 

The rulers took advantage of the Greek devotion to their 
Church and established the Patriarch at Constantinople 
with special honors and privileges. The Greek had always 
a genius for self-government. The Turk soon restored to 
him the old communal system. The Greeks had been the 
great colonizing race of the world, were born to the sea 
and to trade and commerce. The Turk gave them a free 
hand in commercial combinations, schemes and activities, 

J Encyclopedia Britannjca, vpl, 11, p. HO, 



62 THE CKIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

in order that lie might get the larger revenue from them. 
The vast wealth of the Greek merchants meant unlimited 
luxury to their Turkish rulers. 

Certain other elements must be taken into the account. 
The Greeks were on the western confines of the Turkish 
dominions. Some of the Greek tribes had never been com- 
pletely subjected by the Ottomans, especially the Mainotes 
of the Peloponnesus and the Sphakiots of Crete. Many 
of the people had led an independent life as pirates or as 
JcUpMs. The klephts or brigands remained free in their 
hill fastnesses, living by plundering Greek and Turk alike. 
In Albania, Thessaly and Greece proper, the armatoli or 
bodies of Christian warriors acted as armed police. The 
great awakening in Europe at the end of the eighteenth cent- 
ury and the beginning of the nineteenth roused the masses 
of the Greeks from the dull apathy that had resulted from 
their slavery. The French Eevolution roused their minds 
to activity, and made them " ashamed that a nation that 
had played such a grand part in the early civilization of 
mankind should be the slaves of an illiterate and barbar- 
ous horde of aliens." 

II. The Geeek Eisi^stg an^d I^stdepeistdence. 

At length the weakness of the Turkish Empire, as de- 
monstrated by the rebellion of Ali Pasha, the tyrant of 
Janina, showed the times to be propitious for rising, and 
in 1821 the Greek war for independence was begun in the 
month of March, in the north by Prince Alexander Hyp- 
silantes, a Phanariot in the service of Eussia, who crossed 
the Pruth with a few followers, and in the south in the 
Peloponnesus with Germanos, archbishop of Patros, among 
its prime movers. 

It is not the purpose here to give even a sketch of the 
heroic struggle that finally resulted in the recognition of 
Greece as an independent kingdom in 1832, Wc confine 



THE GREEK EE VOLUTION. 53 

the view to the evidences that the Turk was true to his 
nature from beginning to end ; that the so-called Protes- 
tant Christian nations in Europe in their political caj)acity 
did nothing voluntarily except in the furtherance of their 
own selfish aims, apparently indifferent alike to God and 
humanity ; and that Providence was the only genuine 
helper of the people. 

It must not be supposed for one moment, from what 
has been said, that the Greeks were exempt from the op- 
pressive exactions and outrages that have always charac- 
terized the rule of the Turk — to be presented in connec- 
tion with the consideration of a later crisis in the Eastern 
Question ^ — that Mr. Gladstone sums up in ** four awful 
words — plunder, murder, rape and torture." But beyond 
all this we have records of butcheries on a large scale, pre- 
cisely similar to those enacted later in Bosnia, Herzegovina 
and Bulgaria. 

The massacre of the Suliotes is here in point. The an- 
cestors of this brave Grseco-Albanian people fled in the 
sefventeenth century from Turkish oppression, 

and established themselves in the almost inac- „ t 5*^^ 

Suuotes. 

cessible mountains of the Epirus, where they 
maintained a free democratic government for more than 
a century. The Turks, under Ali Pasha, undertook to 
exterminate them. In 1803 they were nearly all butchered 
in cold blood, only 4,000 retiring to Parga, behind the 
ocean walls and impregnable citadel of which they bravely 
maintained their independence until in 1819 Great Britain, 
whose protection they had sought on the fall of Napoleon 
in 1815, and who had garrisoned the city, treacherously 
delivered over the place to Ali Pasha. The Pargiotes then 
" dug up the bones of their ancestors and burnt them, left 
the city, and went into exile" in the Toman Islands. 
Thence they issued later under their renowned chief — 
Marco Bozzaris — immortalized by Byron — to strike the 
1 See The Slavic Crisis. 



54 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

sturdiest blows for Greek freedom. The butchery of this 
heroic people on the Suliote mountains, the horrible de- 
tails of which can not be given here, occurred eighteen 
years before the breaking out of the G-reek Eevolution. 
It was typical, and the natural outcome of the Turk na- 
ture. Any one can study the details for himself. They 
are matters of history. 

The fate that befell Scio, or Chios, is another typical in- 
stance, precisely of a pattern with the latest Turkish treat- 
ment of the Armenians. This island paradise, as the pri- 
vate property of the Sultana, " had long been 
^^^°Scio°^ °^ mildly governed, the people had become 
wealthy, refined and unwarlike." The in- 
habitants were generally unarmed, and most of them had 
taken no part in the war of independence. The Turk in 
April, 1822, visited upon them his fearful vengeance for 
the ravages of the Greek fleet. The story of that murder 
and desolation — never surpassed in all the annals of sav- 
agery — sent a thrill of horror through Christendom. In 
February of that year there was in Scio a population of 
over 100,000 ; the Turkish butchers made their descent 
upon it, and in August there were not more than 30,000 — 
some say not more than 16,000 — remaining. Thirty or 
forty thousand Christians were massacred — with all the 
beastly and brutal accompaniments of Turkish massacres ; 
many other thousands were sold into slavery, and vast 
numbers of the most beautiful and helpless deported to be 
the perpetual victims of the lust and cruelty of the harem. 
The Sultan, moreover, ''^ordered the Chios hostages to be 
executed as an expiation for the insurrection. Four host- 
ages and several merchants were hung at Constantinople, 
and the Archbishop and seventy-five persons were executed 
at Chios by order of the Porte." ^ 

1 From Finlay's History of the Greek Rev., pp. 231, 314 ; cited 
in "England's Responsibility towards Armenia," by Malcom 
MacCoU, 



THE GEBEK KEVOLUTION. 55 

Two years later the same fiendish vengeance was wreaked 
upon Kasos and Psara. And yet the governments of Europe 
turned a deaf ear to the Greek cry of anguish 
that went up to heaven. Though some in- Europr 
terest was roused later by Lord Byron and 
other English Philhellenes, and a few volunteers from France 
and Germany and from England and An^erica joined the 
patriots, yet the nations as such did nothing voluntarily 
except to hinder the cause of freedom. Dr. Donaldson 
says : ^ 

" Most of the European governments had remained indifferent or 
had actually discouraged the outbreak of the Greeks. Eussia had 
disowned Hypsilantes. The monarchs of Europe were afraid that 
the rising of the Greeks was only another eruption of democratic 
feeling fostered by the French Revolution, and thought that it ought 
to be suppressed. But the vast masses of the people were now in- 
terested, and demanded from their Governments a more liberal 
treatment of Greece. Canning inaugurated in 1823, and now carried 
out, this new policy in England. An accident came to the aid of the 
Greek. The fleets of England, France and Russia were cruising about 
the coasts of the Peloponnesus, to prevent the Turkish fleet ravag- 
ing the Greek islands or mainland. Winter coming on, the ad- 
mirals thought it more prudent to anchor in the bay of ISTavarino, 
where the Turkish fleet lay. The Turks regarded their approach as 
prompted by hostile feelings and commenced firing on them, where- 
upon a general engagement ensued, in which the Turkish fleet was 
annihilated, 20th October, 1827." 

To a providence — an accident, men call it — Greece in 
part owed her independence. But even after that " acci- 
dent " the Powers showed the same indiiference. For years 
the brave struggle still went on with no helping hand 
voluntarily lifted by the nations — each selfishly fearing 
lest by the weakening of Turkey some other power might 
win an advantage — until in 1833, the so-called " protect- 
ing Powers " recognized the independence of Greece — al- 
ready achieved by the Greeks themselves — and set the pres- 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 11, p. Ill, article Greece. 



56 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

ent narrow limits to Greece, handing over the rest of the 
great Greek belt of Turkey, almost wholly Christian in its 
population, to Moslem rule and rapine, lest the Turk should 
be too much weakened for the " interests " of the various 
Powers ! 

That struggle of the Greeks for freedom was the hour 
when the Turk ought to have been driven out of Europe 
by the nations of Western Christendom, and the races of 
the old Eastern Christendom set free. That was a fatal 
failure for which the great Powers were responsible. 
When the Kussians, in 1829, were in position to complete 
at once the rescue of Southeastern Europe, they were stopped 
in their victorious career by the treaty of 
^O^iSSr'^ Adrianople. It was immediately after that 
treaty that no less a man than " the statesman- 
warrior," the Duke of Wellington, said : 

" There is no doubt it would have been more fortunate and better 
for the world if tlie treaty of Adrianople had not been signed, and 
if the Russians had entered Constantinople, and if the Turkish 
Empire had been dissolved." 

And all this would have occurred then had it not been 
for Christian Europe, in its official capacity, and notably 
for Great Britain ! They prevented the just solution of 
the Eastern Question, for which iniquity a righteous Prov- 
idence has not ceased to scourge them and to deliver them 
over to judicial blindness till the present time. 

The evils resulting from the action of the Powers, to 
Greece and to the Greeks scattered over the Ottoman Em- 
pire, have been unspeakable. Indeed, so far as the Greeks 
in Turkey and in the islands of the Archipelago have 
suffered, their sufferings have been due primarily to the 
doom to limitations and disabilities then pronounced upon 
the kingdom of Greece by Christian Europe. It was then 
for the first time officially made manifest to all the world 
by the conduct of the Powers that, in the eyes of the 
diplomats, Turkey was of more value than Greece, and 



THE GEEEK EE VOLUTION. 57 

the Balance of Power of greater moment than the wel- 
fare of the Christians of Southeastern Europe. That em- 
boldened the Sultan in his bloody work from that time 
forward, by leading him to expect the protection of Europe 
in case of any extremity in which he might find himself. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CRIMEAN WAR— ITS AIMS AND RESULTS. 

TuEKET was primarily responsible for making the Cri- 
mean War possible. She wilily made some slight troubles 
over the control of the Holy Places at Jerusalem the occa- 
sion for fomenting a war between Russia on the one side 
and Roman Catholic France and Sardinia in conjunction 
with Protestant Great Britain on the other, in order 
thereby to escape, in dealing with her Christian subjects, 
from the restraining hand of the Czar. On the part of 
the Western Powers it was an attempt, originating in 
political jealousies and ambitions, to throttle and perma- 
nently cripple Russia, the only friend of the Christians in 
Turkey that had a treaty-right to intervene for their pro- 
tection, and the only Power in Europe that had ever shown 
any disposition to protect them. 

I. Continued Turkish Baebaeities. 

Turkish oppression and extortion had continued, after 
the unrighteous arrangement of the Powers with Greece, 
very much as they had gone on before. The subject races 
connected with the Greeks suffered from time to time. 
The general oppression and rapine continued and extended 
over the Empire in Europe and in Asia. The Greeks, 
who had been a main source of Turkish revenue, having 
been released from, the grasp of the oppressor, other 
sources of revenue had to be sought, and the region of 
butcheries had to be extended. Perhaps the experience of 

58 ^.. 



THE CRIMEAN WAR — ITS AIMS AKD RESULTS. 59 

the Turk with Greece rendered him at times a little -more 
cautious in his procedure, leading him to carry on the 
work of oppression among those Christians farthest re- 
moved from European observation and interference. 

One instance as typical — that of the Nestorians — must 
suffice. It is to be regretted that there is not space to 
outline the history of these Chaldean Christians who have 
maintained in the mountains of Kurdistan, against fire and 
sword, their faith in the cross of Christ for fifteen centuries 
and more. They are only less interesting than the Armen- 
ians whose experience they have to a large extent paralleled. 

In 1843 the Turks undertook, with the aid of the Kurds, 
to blot out these ancient Christians, The horrible work 
was renewed in 1846, It reached its culmination in 1850. 
The massacre of the latter year was graphically described, 
by Sir Henry Layard, ^^politically an ardent Philo-Turk," 
in his " Nineveh and Its Eemains.^' It is the record of 
his own personal observation and investigation on the 
field of slaughter, to which he went with his Oriental guide. 
His first account is of the massacre of the ISTestorians of the 
Tyari district by Beder Khan Bey, near Lizan on the river 
Zab.^ It is a story that once read is never to be forgotten. 

In that Turkish holiday in 1850, Layard says that the 
number of Nestorians slain was 10,000, all '^^ massacred in 
cold blood,^' besides " a large number of women and chil- 
dren carried away as slaves." 

At a later day the same Beder Khan Bey visited the 
same atrocities upon the ISTestorians of Tkhoma. Mr. 
Layard thus describes the massacre : ^ 

"A few days after my return to Mosul, notwithstanding the at- 
tempts of Tahyar Paslia to avert the calamity, Beder Khan Bey 
marched through the Tiyari mountains, levying contributions on the 
tribes, and plundering the villages, on his Avay to the unfortunate 
district. The inhabitants of Tkhoma, headed by their Meleks, made 

1 Nineveh and Its Remains, vol, 1, pp, 164-7. 

2 Ibid, vol. 1, p, 201. 



60 THE CRIME OE CHRISTENDOM. 

some 1-esistance, but were soon overpowered by numbers. An in- 
discriminate massacre took place. The women were brouglit before 
the chief, and murdered in cold blood. Those who attempted to 
escape were cut off. Three hundred women and children who were 
flying into Baz were killed in the pass I have described. The princi- 
pal villages with their gardens were destroyed, and the churches 
pulled down. Nearly half the pop^^lation fell victims to the fanatical 
fury of the Kurdish chief ; amongst these were one of the Meleks, and 
Kasha Bobaca. With this good priest and Kasha Auraham perished 
the most learned of the Nestorian clergy ; and Kasha Kana is the 
last one who has inherited any part of the knowledge and zeal which 
once so eminently distinguished the Chaldsean priesthood." 

The Sultan hastened to show his appreciation of the 
faithful service rendered, by promoting Beder Khan Bey 
to the dignity of a Pasha ! 

Pressure was brought to bear upon the Turk by the 
civilized world to punish these atrocious massacres con- 
tinued through seven long years. He sent an expedition 
under Osnian Pasha, who defeated the Kurds and captured 
Beder Khan Bey and merely sentenced him to banish- 
ment to Candia, where he lived in state, retaining all his 
retinue and possessions ! What better proof could be had 
that the Turk had been simply using the Kurd as his agent 
in butchering the Nestorian Christians ? Were anything 
further needed, the fact that the son of that Kurdish 
butcher has been but recently one of the honored butchers 
of the Armenian Christians would be sufficient ! 

This one example is enough to show the character of 
the Turk of the period and his method in his characteristic 
work. He has been the same essentially everywhere and 
always. 

II. EussiA THE Only Obstacle. 

There was only one thing that stood in the way of Turk- 
ish barbarities, namely, fear of Kussia, the acknowledged 
Treaty of ^^^^ legal protector of the Greek Christians 
Kutchuk- in the Turkish Empire. That right Eussia 
Kamardji. ]^qI^ ^0 be guaranteed her by the Treaty of 



THE CRIMEAN WAR — ITS AIMS AND EESULTS. 61 

Kutcliuk-Kainardji, made in 1774 between the Ottoman 
Porte and Catherine II. of Eussia. That great Empress 
had beaten and humbled Turkey, forced her to cede Azov 
and other territory to Russia, and to set free the Crimea. 
In the seventh clause of this treaty which gave peace to the 
Turk, the Sublime Porte promised — • 

" To protect constantly the Christian religion and its churches, 
and also to allow the minister of the Imperial Court of Russia 
to make on all occasions representations as well in favor of the 
new church in Constantinople, of which mention will be made 
in the fourteenth article, as in favor of those who officiate therein, 
promising to take such representations into due consideration as 
being made by a confidential functionary of a neighboring and 
sincerely friendly power." 

Eussia interpreted this clause as meaning what it says, 

and on that ground claimed the right of protecting the ■ 

Christians in Turkey. Mr. Gladstone always advocated 

the interpretation of Eussia as the only ad- 

. .,-, T 1 X 1 -r. n T^ • Russia's Claim, 

missible one. Lord John Eussell, as Prime 

Minister, clearly admitted, in the early stages of the con- 
troversy that came about, that the claims of Eussia to a 
protectorate over the Greek Christians ^^were prescribed 
by duty and sanctioned by treaty." This case was a clear 
one. Turkey had no acknowledged place among the 
Powers of Europe — no place in Europe. The office 
claimed by Eussia was a plain requirement of the situa- 
tion, and Eussia was naturally the Power to fill that office. 
Diplomatists and politicians talk of interference, but with 
cut-throats and robbers it is a prime necessity, as well as a 
thing to which nations are morally bound. 

But with the passing years political affairs had taken 
a remarkable turn. Eussia and Great Britain were now 
Asiatic as well as European powers, and " British inter- 
ests " had come to require, in the view of " commercial 
England," the upholding of the Turkish Empire in Europe 
as an obstacle in the way of Eussian aggression. British 



62 THE CEIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

diplomatists, in common witli those of other European 
powers, took np the Turkish interpretation of the Treaty of 
Kainardji, and a great diplomatic controversy was brought 
on, the aim of which was to bar the Czar from the fulfil- 
ment of his office of protector. 

The wily Turk, who had always been astute enough to 
hoodwink the rest of Europe, was intent upon bringing 
the question to issue. The Eastern Question was thus 
given a narrow and definite form : Shall Russia he per- 
mitted to exercise a protectorate over the Greek Christians 
in the Turkish Empire 9 That was the issue tried in the 
Crimean War. 

The ambition of Napoleon III. served the Turk in good 
stead. Louis Napoleon, who had just succeeded in pro- 
curing the installing of himself as Emperor under that 
title, was anxious for a policy of adventure 
■ that would distract the attention of the French 
people from domestic politics until he should be firmly 
seated on the throne. Already one French army was oc- 
cupying Eome, and the Emperor posed as the patron of 
the Papacy. " Another army occupying Jerusalem," sa3^s 
Justin McCarthy, ''would have left the world in no doubt 
as to the supremacy of France." 

ISTor was the occasion wanting for the new move. Tlie 
Latin Church claimed the protectorate over the Holy 
Places in Palestine — the " great Church in Bethlehem ; 
the Sanctuary of the Nativity ; the Tomb of the Virgin ; 
the Stone of Anointing ; the Seven Arches of the Virgin 
in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher." The Sultan of 
Turkey had by treaty acknowledged Francis the First of 
France the protector of these Holy Places and of the monks 
who had charge of them. The Greek Church had obtained 
similar concessions and rights from the Sultans. It was 
in connection with disputes stirred up over these Holy 
Places that France deliberately set to work to provoke a 
quarrel with Eussia. Into which she wililj drew Great Brit- 



THE CRIMEAN WAR — ITS AIMS AND RESULTS. 63 

ain, at the same time tlireateniug the intervention of a 

French fleet and the occupation of Jerusalem. That was 

all that was needed to rouse Kussia. 

The Czar Nicholas, who was reigning at that time, was 

a remarkable character, one of the greatest of the many 

great Eomanoffs and one of the greatest of 

^ . T •• -\/r n 1.1 Czar Nicholas, 

modern sovereigns. Justin McCarthy says 

of him : ^ 

"He had many of the ways of an Asiatic despot. He had a 
strong ambition, a fierce and fitful temper, a daring but some- 
times too vacillating will. He had many magnanimous and noble 
qualities, and moods of sweetness and gentleness. He reminded 
people sometimes of an Alexander the Great ; sometimes of the 
' Arabian Nights ' version of Haroun Alraschid. A certain ex- 
citability ran through the temperament of all his house which, 
in some of its members, broke into actual madness, in others 
prevailed no farther than to lead to wild outbreaks of temper 
such as those that often convulsed the frame and distorted the 
character of a Charles the Bold or of a Coeur de Lion. We 
can not date the ways and characters of Nicholas's family from 
the years of Peter the Great. We must, for tolerably obvious 
reasons, be content to deduce their origin from the reign of Cath- 
erine II. The extraordinary and almost unparalleled conditions 
of the early married life of that much-injured, much-injuring 
woman would easily account for any aberrations of intellect 
and will among her immediate descendants. Her son was a 
madman ; there was madness or something very like it among 
the brothers of the Emperor Nicholas. 

" The Emperor at one time was very popular in England. He 
had visited the Queen, and he had impressed every one by his 
noble presence, his lofty stature, his singular personal beauty, 
his blended dignity and familiarity of manner. He talked as if he 
had no higher ambition than to be in friendly alliance with 
England. When he wished to convey his impression of the high- 
est degree of personal loyalty and honor, he always spoke of the 
word of an English gentleman. There can, indeed, be little 
doubt that the Emperor was sincerely anxious to keep on terms 
of cordial friendship with England ; and, what is more, had no 
idea until the very last that the way he was walking was one 

1 History of Our Own Times, vol. 3, pp. 181, 183. 



64 THE CKIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

which England could not consent to tread. His brother and 
predecessor had been in close alliance with England ; his own 
ideal hero was the Duke of Wellington ; he had made up his 
mind that when the division of the spoils of Turkey came about, 
England and he could best consult for their own interests and the 
peace of the world by making the appropriations a matter of 
joint arrangement." 

Nicholas had clearly understood the situation in Tur- 
key from the early years of his reign. He felt — and felt 
justly — that the right time for making an end of the Turk 
in Europe had come. When he visited England the second 
time, in 1844, he had several free conversations with the 
Duke of Wellington and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Aber- 
deen, '^ about Turkey and her prospects, and what would 
be likely to happen in the case of her dissolution, which he 
believed to be imminent.^^ 

On his return to Eussia he had his Chancellor, Nes- 

selrode, draw up a memorandum, in which were embodied 

the views which Nicholas supposed himself to 
Tlie ' ' Memo- . 

randum " hold in common with the British statesman 

and the with whom he had discussed the then pres- 
" Sick Man " . 

ent aspects of the Eastern Question. It ap- 
parently took the form of a '^'^ formal reminder or record 
of a general and oral engagement," as he understood it. 
It jjroposed that a joint pressure be exercised upon the 
Turk to maintain the existence and independence of 
the Ottoman Empire as essential to both England and 
Eussia ; and emphasized *'the imperative necessity of Tur- 
key being led to treat her Christian subjects with tolera- 
tion and mildness." It took into account the undeniable 
fact that the Ottoman Empire contained within itself many 
elements of dissolution, and in view of them made the fol- 
lowing suggestions : ^ 

" In the uncertainty which hovers over the future a single fund- 
amental idea seems to admit of a really practical application ; 

1 McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, vol. 2, p. 184. 



THE CEIMEAK WAR — ITS AIMS AND EESULTS. 65 

that is, that the danger which may result from a catastrophe in 
Turkey will be much diminished if in the event of its occurring 
Russia and England have come to an understanding as to the 
course to be taken by them in common. That understanding will 
be the more beneficial inasmuch as it will have the full assent 
of Austria, between whom and Russia there already exists an en- 
tire accord." 

This memorandnm was sent to London, where its recep- 
tion and retention in the British Foreign Oflice gave color 
to the claim of Nicholas that there was a tacit understand- 
ing on these matters between Great Britain and Russia. 
When Lord Aberdeen, with whom as Foreign Secretary 
Nicholas had held his principal conversations in 1844, be- 
came Prime Minister in 1853, the Emperor seemed to 
think that the hour for final action had struck. At a 
party given by the Archduchess Helen, at her palace in St. 
Petersburg, he drew aside the British minister. Sir G. Ham- 
ilton Seymour, and " began to talk with him in the most 
outspoken manner about the future of Turkey and the ar- 
rangements it might be necessary for England and Eussia 
to make regarding it.^^ Many conversations equally frank 
followed. In one of them the Emperor said : 

" We have on our hands a sick man — a very sick man ; it will 
be a great misfortune if one of these days he should slip away 
from us before the arrangements necessary have been made." 

From that day the appellation '^'^the sick man" has 
clung to Turkey. The Emjoeror urged decisive joint action 
in view of the inevitable day of the sick man's d'eath. 

But the British views had changed ; new " British in- 
terests " had come in play. Her Indian possessions had 
come into prominence, and fear of Russian 
interference and aggression was already taking ^action ^ 
possession of England. " Commercial Eng- 
land " was in control. She drew out of the agreement and 
repudiated the implied understanding. Constantinople 
must not be permitted to fall into the hands of Eussia. It 
5 



6Q THE CRIME OP CHEISTENDOM. 

was in vain that the Emperor protested that he did not de- 
sire Constantinople. Tlie facts all favor the sincerity of 
his protest. ISTicholas might have occupied Constantinople 

without protest or hindrance in 1829. Well- 
ciaimer^^' i^^^S^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ wonld have been better if he 

had done so. The barbarities of the Greek 
Eevolution had prepared the world for that event ; but he 
made the peace of Adrianople instead. Count Nesselrode 
explained the reasons for making j)eace^ in a letter to the 
Grand Duke Constantino within three months after the 
peace had been made. The reasons were consistent with 
the reasons of the Czar. In the summer of 1853 Count 
Nesselrode made a similar disclaimer in behalf of the Em- 
peror. The Emperor himself explained his own views 
fully in his conversations with Sir Hamilton Seymour about 
the Sick Man. He said : ^ 

" With regard to Constantinople, I am not under the same illu- 
sions as Catherine II. On the contrary, I regard the immense 
extent of Russia as her real danger. I should like to see Turkey 
strong enough to be able to make herself respected by the other 
Powers. But if she is doomed to perish, Eussia and England 
should come to an agreement as to what should be put in her 
place. I propose to form the Danubian Principalities, with Ser- 
via and Bulgaria into one independent State, placed under the 
protection of Russia ; and I declare that Russia has no ambition to 
extend her sovereignty over the territories of Turkey. 

' ' England might take Egypt and Crete ; but I could not allow 
her to establish herself at Constantinople, and this I say frankly. 
On the other hand, I would undertake to promise, on my part, 
never to take Constantinople, if the arrangement which I pro- 
pose should be concluded between Russia and England. If, in- 
deed, Turkey were to go suddenly to pieces before the conclu- 
sion of that convention, and I should find it necessary to occupy 
Constantinople, I would not of course promise not to do so." 

On a subsequent occasion the Emperor said : 

" I would not permit any power so strong as England to occupy 
the Bosporus, by which the Dnieper and the Don find their way 

' Canon MacColl, The Eastern Question, pp. 309-311. 



THE CRIMEAN" WAR — ITS AIMS AND RESULTS. 67 

into the Mediterranean. While the Black Sea is between the 
Don, the Dnieper and the Bosporus, the command of that strait 
would destroy the commerce of Russia, and close to her fleet the 
road to the Mediterranean. If an Emperor of Russia should one 
day chance to conquer Constantinople, or should find himself 
forced to occupy it permanently, and fortify it with a view to 
making it impregnable, from that day would date the decline of 
Russia. If I did not transfer my residence to the Bosporus, my 
son, or at least my grandson, would. The change would certainly 
be made sooner or later ; for the Bosporus is warmer, more agree- 
able, more beautiful than Petersburg or Moscow ; and if once the 
Czar were to take up his abode at Constantinople, Russia would 
cease to be Russia. There is not a Russian who would not like to 
see a Christian crusade for the delivery of the Mosque of Saint 
Sophia ; I should like it as much as any one. But nobody would 
like to see the Kremlin transported to the Seven Towers." 

Alexander II. ^ at a later date, held and reiterated the 

same views. Both Alexander and Nicholas were wise and 

far-seeing men, and were doubtless sincere in 

these views and expressions. They did not -^^^^f^^^^'s 
-■■ . . '' Disclaimer, 

purpose to ruin their Empire. But Great 

Britain drew off and followed '' British interests/" unmoved 
by the appeals in behalf of the enslaved Eastern Chris- 
tians. She attempted to draw back from her acknowledg- 
ment of the Russian right of protection of the Christians. 
That was the beginning of a breach between England and 
Eussia that has never been healed. It brought the former 
power into line to co-operate with France when the ambi- 
tious scheme of Louis Napoleon — already adverted to — 
was formed and ready for execution. Back of the petty 
quarrel over the Holy Places there were innumerable greater 
things. 



III. The Eol'sij^g of Eussia and the Couese oe 
Diplomacy. 

The Eussian Emperor was now fully roused by the action 
of Great Britain and France, and the insolence of the Turk 



68 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

now assured of their backing ; and the Russian nation was 
roused in sympathy with him. Call the tide of feeling 
by whatever name — race enthusiasm, religious fanaticism 
— it existed, and no ruler of Russia could have withstood 
it then, still less when it took more potent form and swept 
before it the Greek Church and the Slavic race twenty years 
later. 

l^icholas sent Prince Mentschikoff to Constantinople 
with a convention concerning the Russian right of protec- 
tion, of which he demanded the Turk's immediate accept- 
ance. Turkey refused ; Prince Mentschikoff withdrew in 
a rage ; and the Emperor despatched two divisions of his 
army to take possession of the Danubian principalities with 
a view of obtaining material guarantees for the concessions 
already demanded of Turkey. 

But European diplomacy had not yet reached its limit. 
The Vienna Note, concocted in Paris, completed in 

Vienna, the four great Powers were agreed 
'^^f>"J^f^^ upon, and Russia at once offered to accept 

it. But Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the Brit- 
ish ambassador at Constantinople, interposed and showed 
them that it virtually conceded everything that Russia had 
sought, namely, an acknowledgment of her protectorate 
over the Christians of the Greek Church in the Sultan's 
dominions. That would have been the recognition of her 
right by all the rest of Europe. The Powers that had before 
been charmed with the Note now rejected it. 

The Turk felt assured that the great Western Powers were 
back of him, and he was therefore incorrigible. For the 

words of the Vienna Note which declared that 

The Turk ^-^q Government of his Maiesty the Sultan 
Encotiragea. , . j j 

would remain "faithful to the letter and the 

spirit of the stipulations of the Treaties of Kainardji and 

of Adrianople, relative to the protection of the Christian 

religion," he proposed to substitute the following : 

" To the Stipulation of the Treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by 



THE CRIMEAN WAR — ITS AIMS ANd RESULTS. 69 

that of Adriunoi^le, relative to the protection hy the Sublime Porte 
of the Cliristian religion." 

Tliat was to remand the Christians to the tender mercies 
of the great robber and butcher of the ages. It was an 
insult to Russia and an affront to Christendom. It put an 
end to all hopes of peace from the side of Russia. 



" Christian England " Against the Crimean War. — 
Prince Albert's Memorandum. 

The best Christian element in the British nation was 
undoubtedly very largely averse to the war. When it 
was imminent, but not yet declared, 'Hwo ,,«. . .. 
divergent policies had already manifested England" op- 
themselves in the Cabinet ; the one headed Posed. 
by Lord Aberdeen, and the other by Lord Palmerston. 
On Lord Aberdeen's side was the late Prince Consort." 
It was at that time that Prince Albert expressed his broad, 
statesmanlike, patriotic and Christian views in his " Mem- 
orandum for the Consideration of the Cabi- 
net," since published in Theodore Martin's 
" Life of the Prince Consort." The following is his state- 
ment of the j)oint at issue : ^ 

' ' In acting as auxiliaries to the Turks we ought to be quite 
sure that they have no object in view foreign to our duty and in- 
terests ; that they do not drive at war whilst we aim at peace ; that 
they do not, instead of merely resisting the attempt of Russia to 
obtain a protectorate over the Greek population incompatible 
with our own independence, seek to obtain themselves the power 
of imposing a more oppressive rule of two millions of fanatic 
Mussulmans over twelve millions of Christians ; that they do not 
try to turn the tables upon the weaker power now that, backed 
by England and France, they have themselves become the 
stronger. 

"There can be little doubt, and it is very natural, that the 
fanatical party at Constantinople should have such views ; but to 

I Ca»on MacCoU, The Eastern (^uestioiij pp. 416, 417, 



70 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

engage our fleet as an auxiliary force for such purposes would be 
fighting against our own interests, policy and feelings. 

" From this it would result that, if our forces are to be employed 
for any purpose, however defensive, as an auxiliary to Turkey, 
we must insist upon keeping not only the conduct of the negotia- 
tion, but also the peace and war, in our own hands, and that, 
Turkey refusing this, we can no longer take part for her. 

' ' It will be said that England and Europe have a strong inter- 
est, setting all Turkish considerations aside, that Constantinople 
and the Turkish territory should not fall into the hands of Russia, 
and that they should in the last extremity even go to war to 
prevent such an overthrow of the balance of power. This must 
be admitted, and such a war may be right and wise. But this 
would be a war not for the maintenance of the integrity of the 
Ottoman Empire, but merely for the interests of the European 
powers of civilization. It ought to be carried on unshackled by 
obligations to the Porte, and will probably lead, in the peace which 
must be the object of the war, to the obtaining of arrangements 
more consonant with the well-understood interests of Europe, of 
Christianity, liberty and civilization, than the re-imposition of 
the ignorant, barbarian and despotic yoke of the Mussulman 
over the most fertile and favored portion of Europe." 

But "Commercial England" was bent on the war. 
The Memorandum was sent to Lord Aberdeen, Secretary 

of Foreign Affairs, and on examination en- 
' Engl^nT"''^ dorsed by him and by Lord Clarendon, Sir 

James Graham and Lord John Eussell. But 
Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, to whom it was then 
sent, yiolently attacked it, scouted its ideas of Christian 
philanthropy, and declared his belief that the stories about 
Mussulman fanaticism were " fables invented at Vienna 
and St. Petersburg,-" The " massacre of Sinope," as it was 
then sensationally styled, which, as later British historians 
show, was simply a battle brought on by the Turks them- 
selves in the harbor of Sinope, and in which their fleet 
was annihilated, as had before been the case in the battle 
of Navarino, Lord Palmerston made the occasion of push- 
ing the nation into the war, for which long years of peace 
had made foolish men eager. Palmerstoi; was a diploma-' 



THE CKIMEAISr WAR — ITS AIMS AND BESULTS. 71 

tist SO consumed by diplomacy as apparently to be inca- 
pable of appreciating any moral or Christian issue. More- 
over lie was supported, as already said, by the urgent 
pressure of the French Emperor. 

Eussia was warned out of the Black Sea, and advised 
that the Great Powers would enforce its neutrality. The 
Czar withdrew his representatives from London and 
Paris, and, on February 21, 1854, his diplomatic relations 
with Great Britain and France came to an end. Great Brit- 
ain, acting independently, despatched her insolent ulti- 
matum to Russia, in a letter from Lord Clarendon to Count 
JNTesselrode, February 27, 1854, demanding Russia's with- 
drawal from the Danubian Principalities by April 30, and 
the restriction of her action, to purely diplomatic limits. 
It was of course indignantly but silently rejected. Russian 
patriotism was at stake, as well as Christianity in South- 
eastern Europe. 

IV. The Crimean" War and its Immediate Results. 

England and France entered upon the war as allies, 
Prussia and Austria withdrawing from the alliance. The 
allied fleet entered the Black Sea, and with the army in- 
vested Sebastopol, the great arsenal of Russia in the Crimea, 
where the war was mainly fought out. During its prog- 
ress the Emperor Nicholas died suddenly of pulmonary 
apoplexy, March 2, 1855 — some said that he died of a 
broken heart — and was succeeded by his son Alexander 
II. Although not inclined to war it was impossible for 
Alexander to draw back from it. The long and bloody 
struggle continued. On September 8, 1855, the allies at- 
tempted to storm the defenses of Sebastopol but failed. 
When they proceeded to renew the attack on the next day 
they found the enemy gone. Prince Gortschakoif had 
withdrawn his army by a bridge of boats across the bay, 
fq,nd was beyond their reach. When the explosions ol 



72 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

powder magazines and arsenals and the cessation of tlie rag- 
ing flames permitted them to enter, they found it a second 
Moscow. The fleet had been scuttled and sunk in the 
harbor, Sebastopol was no longer of any use to Russia, and 
the Allies — England, France, Sardinia and Turkey — had 
nothing to show to the world but a series of blunders and 
of heavy losses, and were practically still outside of the 
Russian dominions. In Europe it was the Crimean War. 
In Asia Russia won great military successes beyond the 
Caucasus in spite of the Allied Powers, and prepared the 
way for her later conquest of Transcaucasia to the summit 
of the Armenian Plateau. 

It is remarkable that the war made only one great mili- 
tary reputation, that of the Russian Todleben, whom 
Providence thus prepared for the deliverance of the Chris- 
tians in Turkey, in the Russo-Turkish War, more than 
twenty years later. 

It is not, however, the purpose to trace the course of 
that war, but merely to make clear the issues involved, as 
marking one of the stages in the progress toward the solu- 
tion of the Eastern Question. 

The Russian power after the fall of Sebastopol seemed 

broken, and all parties were anxious — France especially so 

— for the war to close. An armistice was 

''^pS°^ concluded February 26, 1856, and the bel- 
ligerents having met and conferred in the 
Congress of Paris, signed the Treaty of Paris, March 30, 
1856. 

Lord Palmerston had accomplished only part of what 
he desired — in what had been his one aim — in the putting 
down of Russia. He had further work in hand. An ad- 
ditional Tripartite Treaty, between England, France and 
Austria, in which these powers guaranteed jointly and 
severally the independence and territorial integrity of 
Turkey, was drawn up and signed in Paris, April 15, 1856. 
And as if this were not enough a Treaty was also drawn up 



THE CEIMEAN WAE — ITS AIMS AND KESULTS. 73 

between England, France and Sweden, in which the latter 
bound herself not to cede to Russia any part of her ter- 
ritories or any rights of fishery, and England and France 
agreed to maintain Sweden by force against Russian ag- 
gression. 

When the general provisions of the Treaty of Paris are 
taken into account, it becomes evident that the wise dip- 
lomatists were undertaking to settle matters permanently. 
That Treaty restored the territorial status quo of the ante- 
bellum time, but it shut in the Russian from the world and 
was clearly calculated to cripple him for all the future. It 
bound the giant hand and foot. How could he possibly 
break the thrice triple chains ? 

But the responsibility of Palmerston and England for all 
these things was of little moment compared 
with their responsibility for the more import- ;^^^^*^-yj'-+ 
ant issues of the Crimean War that have l>een 
the bane of Europe from that day to this. These were as 
follows : 

First, the War brought about the forcible abrogation of 
the claim and treaty-right of Russia to be the protector of 
the suffering millions of Christians in the Turkish Em- 
pire. On that issue Russia had fought out the Crimean 
War. In the settling of that issue Russia was undoubt- 
edly on the side of right and humanity and Christianity, 
and the Allied Powers as undoubtedly on the side of wrong 
and inhumanity and Islam. Had British success stopped 
there it would have been bad enough ; but that was only 
the beginning. 

Secondly, the Treaty admitted the Sublime Porte to a 
place among the Powers of Europe and secured to it all 
the privileges and advantages of that position. Until that 
time Europe had denied any such recognition to the ac- 
knowledged robber and butcher of the world, on the ground 
that he was unfit for it. It would have been bad enough 
if British success had reached its limit here ; but it did not. 



74 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Thirdly, tlie Treaty bound all the Powers of Europe by a 
strict engagement to respect and maintain the independ- 
ence and territorial integrity of Turkey, and warned off all 
would-be violators of these. Provision was thus attempted 
to be made for maintaining the " Sick Man " permanently 
in Southeastern Europe by the united power of Western 
Christendom, and that in the face of the moral conviction 
of all the decent elements of mankind to the contrary. 
But even that was not the worst part of the outcome of 
British diplomacy. 

Fourthly, the work of the War and of the Treaty cul- 
minated in the declaration by the Sultan, of the absolute 
independence of Turkey of interference, by any outside 
parties whatsoever, in behalf of the suffering and enslaved 
Christians in his dominions. That was the crowning 
iniquity of all. 

And in this, as in so many other instances, the wily 
Turk was too cunning for the Western diplomats. Antici- 
pating the action of the Powers at Paris, 
^Firman^^^ Turkey issued a Hatt-i-Sheriff, or imperial 
decree, February 21, 1856, five days before the 
signing of the Treaty of Paris, promising to grant perfect 
religious toleration to all her subjects. That was intended 
to forestall any adverse action of the Powers. The Firman 
was immediately communicated to the Congress at Paris, 
and furnished the subject of Article IX. of the Treaty of 
Paris. The Congress expressed itself as satisfied with this 
solemn pledge of Turkey, and they declared that they did 
not understand it as " giving them the right to mix them- 
selves up in the relations of the Sultan with his people." 
The Powers at first insisted on exacting from the Sultan a 
strict engagement " to carry out an extensive system of 
reforms on behalf of his Christian subjects," but when the 
Sultan appealed to them to trust to his ^'^ honor" and 
accept his "'Imperial Word," as the Moslem ruler, that 
he would fulfill his engagement, they relented, and made 



THE CEIMEAK WAR — ITS AIMS AND EEStJLTS. 75 

the fatal mistake of not incorporating these reforms in 
the Treaty. So they remained only the promises of the 
always promiseful Turk, and were never a part of the 
Treaty ! 

That seemed the death-knell of Christian hope I The 
Christians were thus turned over by Europe to the tender 
mercies of this brute of brutes, and in such condition of dis- 
ability that they conld only be helped by warlike interfer- 
ence, against which the Powers had bound themselves to 
defend the Turk. Probably no nation will ever incur 
graver moral responsibility or a heavier guilt. And yet 
the Prime Minister of England plumed himself on these 
achievements, and twenty years later Lord Beaconsfield 
discovered the political doctrine of the awful sanctity of 
the Treaty of Paris ! And these men, and such as they, 
thought the Eastern Question was to be settled in that 
way ! Infidel and Jew in these two men conspired against 
Christendom and in favor of Islam ! 

All this was done in spite of the scathing expositions 
of its folly and the indignant protests against its inquity 
by the noblest men in the British nation — of pj-^^ggt ^f 
such men as John Bright and Gladstone and "Christian 
Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Aberdeen. Lord England." 
Aberdeen had suggested that it might possibly secure 
peace in Southeastern Europe for twenty-five years. He 
was a prophet, only war came again between Russia and 
Turkey three years too soon for his prediction. Lord Aber- 
deen's outlook toward the future, before the Crimean 
War, as given in his reply to Lord Palmerston's criticism 
of the Prince Consort's Memorandum, was one of remark- 
able character. Pie said : ^ 

" Notwithstanding the favorable opinion entertained by many, 
it is difficult to believe in the improvement of the Turks. It is 
true that under the pressure of the moment benevolent decrees 
may be issued ; but these, except under the eye of some Foreign 

1 Life of the Prince Consort, vol. 3, p. 528. 



76 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Minister, are entirely neglected. Their whole system is radically 
vicious and inhuman. I do not refer to fables which may be in- 
vented at St. Petersburg or Vienna, but to numerous despatches 
of Lord Stratford himself, and of our own consuls, who describe 
a frightful picture of lawless oppression and cruelty. This is so 
true that if the war should continue, and the Turkish armies 
meet with disaster, we may expect to see the Christian popula- 
tions of the Empire rise against their oppressors ; and in such a 
case, it would scarcely be proposed to employ the British force in 
the Levant to assist in compelling their return under a Mahom- 
medan yoke." 

This was in 1853, Twenty-three years later the very 
policy which he thought impossible was adopted ! " The 
British force in the Levant was employed to assist in com- 
pelling the suppression of the insurrection of the Christian 
population of Turkey !" Twenty-one years later the 
same thing was re-enacted in Crete ! 

V. Eemoter Eesults of the Crimeajst War. 

The immediate results of the Crimean War were but 

the beginnings of a dark future, to follow from the letting 

loose of the murderous Turk — unhindered by 

Atf t de ^^^ ^^^ restraints — upon his helpless Christian 
subjects. Before the War Turkey had nat- 
urally been somewhat careful in her choice of subjects for 
her oppression and extortion. She had sought out those 
in whom Russia was least interested, and had left the 
Slavic race and the adherents of the Greek Church com- 
paratively unmolested. That was the prudent course. 
But the Turkish diplomacy in bringing about the Crimean 
War had been astutely directed to putting an end to that 
state of things. With the Treaty of Paris once enacted 
the entire policy of the Sublime Porte in dealing with the 
subject Christians was revolutionized. It began dealing 
with a free hand, not only with the foreign Christians, but 
with the native as well ; not only with the Nestorians, but 



THE CRIMEAN WAR — ITS AIMS AND RESULTS. 77 

with the adherents of the Greek Church, and that right 
up to the borders of the Eussian Empire. 

The change was marked in the case of the American 
missions, which had at that time been in successful opera- 
tion for about thirty years, and whose outlook was regarded 
as exceedingly cheering. The native Christians under 
the shadow of the Eussian tegis were in the enjoyment of a 
large measure of freedom — especially in the remote Arme- 
nian provinces. But when Turkey was made one of the 
Powers of Europe, and given a free hand, her methods of 
dealing with her Christian subjects changed 
at once. In place of the old, forced toleration. The New- 
there was substituted a policy of repression, 
persecution, and destruction, — the natural outcome of the 
Turkish religion and Turkish nature. A startling sum- 
mary of the results, as shown in the changed condition of 
the Christians, is given in a recent paper by a Turkish 
Christian, writing from Syria : ^ 

" During the forty years which have elapsed since the Crimean 
War, the Turks have, by wicked, wily policy, filched away almost 
every right the Christians possessed. The orders emanating from 
Constantinople during the past five years are a veritable Jihad 
against Christianity. The treaties gave Christians the right to 
bviild churches, open schools, print and circulate books. But 
to-day no church can be built, no little day-school opened, with- 
out express permission from the Sultan. Years ago we learned, to 
our sorrow, that it was the setttled policy of the Government to 
refuse all such applications, and we gave all time and strength to 
keep what we then possessed. But restriction after restriction 
has been laid down, annoyance and outrage perpetrated, until 
even the Moslems themselves are ashamed of the policy of their 
own Government. No Christian book can now be printed with- 
out being first sent to Constantinople for examination and muti- 
lation, and the stupidity and maliciousness of the Moslem ex- 
aminers goes almost beyond belief, as shown in an article in The 

1 Tiu-ks and Christians — ^Why they cannot Live Peaceably 
Together. By a Turkish Christian. The Independent, August 
23, 1895. 



78 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

Independent of May 16th, Years ago all preaching in the open 
air or public places was forbidden. Then all controversy even 
between Christians was stifled. Within three years the opening 
of law courts and all Government offices on Sunday was mooted 
as a possibility — all in tlie line of harassing and repressing Chris- 
tianity. Ten thousand times a day in every city of the Empire 
Christianity is openly cursed and maligned ; but woe to the 
Christian who does resent by cursing the Sultan, the Prophet of 
Islam ! So horrible are the consequences and so easy is it to ob- 
tain false witness against a Christian that this charge is now 
the favorite weapon against any one who may fall under the dis- 
pleasure of his Moslem neighbors. Nothing is harder to meet, 
notliing so hard to refute. As a prominent Government official, 
a Christian, recently said to the writer : ' God saves us by bribery ; 
were that door closed there would be no place for Christians in 
the Empire ! ' " 

Some of the later results, in the outward horrors that 
have affected both foreign and native Christians, in the per- 
sistent effort to destroy Christianity, will be found stated 
in the subseqiient pages of this volume. 

The attempt at an iniquitous settlement had in fact 
merely complicated matters in the East, and the greatest 
criminal in it all had been " Commercial England " under 
lead of the conscienceless Palmerston ! She was chiefly 
responsible for the new phase in " The Crime of Christen- 
dom." Henceforth Turkey was to be reckoned with as an 
independent Power with the pledged support of the other 
Powers that had, at the cost of a great war, exalted her 
to that position. 



CHAPTER rV. 

THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR OF 

1877-78. 

The Russo-Turkish War furnished the occasion for the 
iniquitous diplomacy of '' Commercial England" in re- 
manding to Turkish slavery and butchery several millions 
of the Christians liberated by Russia at vast cost of men 
and means, and doing it in spite of Christian England 
and Christian Europe, while preparing the way for gratify- 
ing her own greed in securing large portions of Turkish 
territory and insuring the Turk against coercion by the 
other Powers. 

The new outbreak of the Eastern Question in 1877-78 
was the legacy of Lord Palmerston and the diplomacy of 
the time of the Crimean War to a new genera- 
tion, or, rather, to a later period in the career P^l'^^^'ston s 
of the same generation. The hypocrisy of the 
actors of the earlier period was consummate and supreme. 
Their real aim was to crush Russia, while their pretended 
purpose was to secure reforms in Turkey, — reforms that 
they never made an effort either to inaugurate or to carry 
through. Great Britain before all the other Powers had 
bound herself, by her whole course from the beginning of 
the Crimean War, to bring about the needed reforms, 
and her responsibility for their utter failure was therefore 
foremost. To understand the great movement of 1877-78 
several things need to be considered : 

79 



80 THE CRIME OF CHEISTEN'DOM. 

1st. The Practical Outcome of the Hatt-i-Humayonn of 

1856. 

2d. The Crisis that called for Eussian Intervention, 
3d. The Eussian Intervention in behalf of the Greek 

Christians, and the Eesults of the War. 

I. Twenty Yeaes op the IlATT-i-HuMATOuisr. 

The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Crimean War, 
organized a new experiment with the Turk in Europe. 
That Treaty was an attempt to take the 
Pa ^ ° Ottoman Empire into the society of Chris- 
tian nations, and to uphold its government in 
order to block the Westward advance of Eussia. The 
Hatt-i-Humayoun of February 8, 1856, was to settle the 
Eastern Question ! President Woolsey summarizes the 
provisions of the Treaty of Paris in connection with it, as 
follows : ^ 

' ' By the Treaty of Paris the Sultan is invited to participate in the 
European advantages of public law and concerted action and is secured 
in the independence and integrity of his empire. The Firman of 
February 18, 1856, placing all Christian sects in Turkey on a level 
with Mohammedans, in respect to life, property, religion, etc., is 
acknowledged by the other powers, who, however, disclaim all right 
to interfere between the Sultan and liig subjects, or in the internal 
administration of his kingdom. (Art. vii.-lx.)" 

Tliat was the installation of Turkey as one of the inde- 
pendent Powers of Europe. It was plainly the betrayal of 
the Christians of Turkey by the other Powers. 
Iniquitous rp|^g provisions for reform had been drawn up 
by the Allied Powers and indorsed by a Proto- 
col of all the European Powers. The Turkish minister 
objected to its embodiment in the Treaty, on the plea of 
sparing the dignity of the Porte, and Lord Palmerston, with 
the aid of his usual " diplomacy," succeeded in securing 

1 Woolsey, International Law, p. 420. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TUEKISH WAE. 81 

its exclusion from, the body of the Treaty. The Sultan 
bound himself by the most " solemn engagements upon his 
honor " to carry out its provisions ! Palmerston had ap- 
parently succeeded in removing the last obstacle in the 
way of the destruction of the already long oppressed and 
tortured Christian subjects of Turkey. 

Mr. J. Milliken Napier Brodhead has recently summed 
up in graphic phrase the hideous iniquity of the Crimean 
War. He says in connection with the opening of the 
Russo-Turkish War : ^ 

" Paissia, meanwhile, had thrown an army into theDannbian Prin- 
cipalities, and was exacting tlie strict fulfilment of the treaties, at the 
sword's point — the only rational way to expostulate witli Turks. 

"The Powers all recognized the justice of Russia's action when 
they urged the Porte to accept the "Vienna Note" which embodied 
them. While negotiations were still pending, Louis Napoleon formed 
a special alliance with England, and the Crimean War was declared. 

"If the allies had given heed to Lord Eaglan's pathetic appeal, 
and devoted themselves to redressing the wrongs of these unfor- 
tunate Christians, instead of crushing their champions, millions of 
lives would have been spared, and the hideous massacres of Crete in 
1866, of Bulgaria ten years later, might have been averted, to say 
nothing of more recent atrocities. 

" All reverence is due to the heroes of the Light Brigade, and to 
millions of others who, at the voice of duty, allowed themselves to 
be slaughtered for an unholy cause, and i^erished by thousands, of 
hunger and cold and disease, on the bleak shores of the Crimea. 
Nevertheless, when time shall have laid the dust of glory raised by 
crumbling fortresses on the bloody days of Alma and Sebastopol, 
humanity will judge more sanely of the brutal facts of the Crimean 
War. Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle 
of three civilized nations fighting, side by side, with and for semi- 
barbarous Moslems to crush the noble champions of their fellow- 
Slaves and fellow-Christians, compelled to languish for four centuries 
beneath the yoke of those savage aliens. Posterity will cry shame 
to the victors and glory to the vanquished. Nay, we may say that 
the judgment of posterity has been anticipated, and that the post- 
humous reprobation of the Crimean War has already begun. During 
this war nearly four million lives were sacrificed, not in the cause gf 

1 The Independent, February 27, 1896, p. 271* 



82 THE CEIME OP CHRISTEinDOM. 

freedom, not to redress the wrong of the oppressed, but to pave the 
way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry 
of horror throughout Christendom." 

In the yiew of the diplomatic optimists the Ottoman 
was to win for himself a place in Europe by this last experi- 
ment. Let him. be tried by the results. 

(I.) The Tukkish Principles in Full Operation". 

Tested by the fruits of its first twenty years and more, 

the Hatt-i-Humayoun proved an absolute failure. The 

butcheries of the Turkish subjects of the Sultan went on 

as of old. It was in fact the signal for giving full sway 

to Turkish principles in dealing with Christians. The fear 

of Russia had heretofore restrained the Turk from the full 

and free application of the principles of his religion to his 

Christian subjects. Theoretically that fear 

The Turkish ^as now removed from before his eyes ; prac- 

rmcip es. ^-^g^-^iy j^ required a little time for him to adjust 

himself to the conditions of the new paradise into which 

the so-called Christian nations had introduced him. It is 

necessary to inquire what those principles are, as we shall 

soon find them ruthlessly applied. 

" The Koran, tribute, or the sword " — this was the Turk's 
ultimatum to the Christians that he conquered. It is the 
glory of the Christians that they so generally held fast their 
faith in Christ. It meant for them all that is embraced 
in the Turkish concept of " tribute,"' and when they could 
not longer furnish " tribute " it meant " the sword." 

It is necessary to understand what tribute to the Turk 
means. Its meaning is outside of and beyond all the ordi- 
nary conceptions of those accustomed to Chris- 
What Trihute ^:^^^ civilization. The '' tribute " of the 
Christian to Islam involves a threefold system 
of taxes : the ordinary taxes ; extraordinary taxes ; and the 
hospitality tax. 

Jst, The Christians are required to begin with the pay- 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND KUSSO-TUKKISH "WAR. 83 

ment of the same taxes as are exacted from all other 
subjects of the Turkish Government. These are often 
oppressive and exorbitant as assessed upon the Moslem 
even. 

2d. The Christians are further subject to the following 
extraordinary taxes : ^ 

" a. A capitation tax, called ' the Humiliation Tax,' for the right 
to live from year to year. 

"6. A tax in lieu of military service (from which Christians are 
rigidly excluded), assessed on all males from three months old and 
upwards. The blind, lame and decrepit are made to pay, though not 
legally liable. 

"c. Extraordinary taxes for temporary purposes, which, however, 
are never removed. Thus an extraordinary tax was laid on the Chris- 
tians in 1867 to pay the cost of the Sultan's visit to England. It was 
promised that the tax would be levied only for that year ; but the 
wretched Christians are obliged to pay it still. 

" d. Sometimes the Christians are made to pay their taxes a year 
or two in advance on promise of exemption from taxation in the in- 
terval. But the promise is never kept. For instance, the Christians 
throughout Turkey were compelled to pay two years' taxation in 
18*77 as a contribution towards the war against Russia ; but the 
taxes were exacted as usual without the smallest remission during 
those two years. 

"Any failure to pay any of these taxes is legally rebellion, involv- 
ing forfeiture of property and life." 

3d. In addition to this practical system of robbery is the 
Hospitality Tax^ of which Canon MacColl says : ^ 

" Another requirement of the Sacred Law, rigorously enforced under 
every Mussulman government ever since the capture of Jerusalem by 
Khalif Omar in A. D. 637. is the Gazdalik, or Hospitality Tax. 
Every Christian householder who is a subject of the Sultan is bound 
by law to provide three days' gratuitous hospitality for every Moham- 
medan traveler or official who may choose to ask for it, from the 
Pasha to the beggar. The wretched Christian is thus hardly ever 
free from these unwelcome guests, who invariably choose the best 
houses in town or village, and the best room and food in the house, 
treating the householder and his family the while as their slaves, 

1 England's Responsibility to Armenia, pp, 6^ 7, 



84 THE CKIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

The Sacred Law does not sanction violence to the women of the 
house, but neither does it forbid it. And human nature being what 
it is, and the Mussulman regarding,- as he does, the hated Giaour as 
his natural prey, the women of the family are usually included among 
the luxuries required by this rite of compulsory hospitality. At 
nightfall the men are ordered out of the house, and the women are 
left at the mercy of the Mussulman guests — policemen, soldiers, rov- 
ing dervishes, and the like." 

Let it be noted also that the Sacred Law of the Koran 
makes the Christian utterly helpless in the hands of the 
Turkish tax-gatherer, by a twofold provision : 

1. Christian evidence is not admissible against a Moham- 
medan. Says Canon MacColl, substantiating his state- 
ment by ample citation of authorities : ^ 

"This is another provision of the Sacred Law which is abso- 
lutely unchangeable. It has prevailed in every Mohammedan State 
from Mohammed's time to our own, and is in full force at this mo- 
ment throughout the dominions of the Sultan." 

2. Christians are not allowed to possess arms. Says 
Canon MacCoU on this point : ^ 

" Another provision of the Sacred Law of Islam forbids the Chris- 
tians to possess arms. This is so well known that it is not necessary 
to dwell upon it. The Sultan engaged in the Treaty of Paris in 1856 
to put the Christians, in this as in all other respects, on a footing 
of perfect equality with his Mussulman subjects. But that promise, 
like all the Sultan's promises to ameliorate the condition of his Chris- 
tian subjects, has remained a dead letter. In the Berlin Memorandum, 
Germany, France, Austria, Russia, and Italy proposed to demand the 
fulfillment of the Sultan's treaty engagement to permit the Chris- 
tians to possess arms. Lord Derby strenuously opposed this most 
reasonable suggestion on the ground that if the Christians were 
armed ' a collision would be inevitable ! ' So he avoided the collision 
by leaving the Christians unarmed and helpless at the mercy of the 
armed Mussulmans." 

Wherever and whenever the Turk appears with his 
demand for ^' tribute ^^ the Christian is therefore at his 
mercy. To protest or to attempt to resist is death. What- 

1 England's Responsibility to Armenia, p. 15, 
?Jbid, pp. 18, 13, 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND EUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 85 

ever course he takes his certain fate in the end may be 
summed up in Mr. Gladstone's '' four awful words — plunder, 
murder, raj^e and torture." 

The ruthless and unchecked application of these princi- 
ples from the time of the Treaty of Paris till the present 
day — an application for which '''Commercial England" 
is chiefly responsible — has made the Turkish Empire a 
veritable hell upon earth to the millions of its Christian 
subjects. 

(II.) Some Specimen Butcheries of this Period. 

It is here possible to give only specimens of the free appli- ' 
cation of the principles of the Koran to which the way had 
thus been opened for the Turk, through a bloody war, by 
the most Christian Powers of Christian Europe. 

In this connection may appropriately be summarized 
some facts recently stated by Dr. William 
Wright 1 concerning Syria, where in 1860 ^'-^^ssal^s^ 
a series of massacres occurred that for extent 
and brutality were second only to the latest Turkish atroci- 
ties. Since 1517, when Selim I. conquered Syria, it has, 
with one short interval, formed a part of the Ottoman 
Empire. This comparatively happy interval extended 
from 1832 to 1840. In the former year Ibrahim Pasha 
conquered the country for his father, Mohammed Ali, 
the Albanian JPasha of Egypt ; in the latter, through 
the power of England, allied with Austria and Turkey, 
Syria was again restored to Ottoman rule, and the doom 
of the Christians once more signed and sealed. 

The conquest of the country by Ibrahim was achieved 
with the encouragement of Erance, aside from 
the Concert of Europe ; but in 1840, when the 
English bombarded Akka and were led through a few 
" brilliant skirmishes " under Sir Charles Napier, aided by 

1 The Syrian Massacres : A Parallel and a Contrast. By William 
Wright, D. D. Contemporary Review, January, 1897. 



86 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

an insurrection fomented among the Maronites " by Turk- 
ish agents, some of whom were Englishmen,^' according 
to Colonel Churchill, the French, unable to cope with the 
allies, were compelled to abandon Ibrahim and the Chris- 
tians to the Concert of Europe. 

As soon as Ibrahim began to rule he undertook the re- 
moval of disabilities from the Christians, whom he found 
loaded with contumely. If the Christian had wealth he 
was plundered ; if he concealed his wealth he was basti- 
nadoed until he revealed it. He was not permitted to ride 
on a horse, or even on a donkey. He had to give any 
Turk the right of way in the street by stepping aside in 
the slush. He was compelled to wear black clothes and 
black headgear, while the Turk dressed in gay apparel. 
He was obliged to speak to a Turk with bated breath, or 
be struck on the mouth. He could not live in a house as 
high as the Turk's, or wear arms, and when he died his 
corpse was not j^ermitted to be carried past a mosque. 

Fierce resistance was offered by the Mussulmans to Ibra- 
him's benign rule, but he prevailed. Christians were 
allowed to dress as they pleased ; they were elected to 
act as councilors, and were eligible to serve in all depart- 
ments of the State, civil and military. Absolute equality 
between Mussulman and Christian was established. It is 
related that a deputation of Mohammedans one day waited 
on his Excellency to urge a return to ^^the^ood old ways." 
They complained, among other things, that Christians 
had taken to riding on horses in the streets of Damascus. 
Ibrahim suggested that the deputation should ride on 
camels, and then they would be still higher than the Chris- 
tians. The deputation sullenly withdrew. " The Chris- 
tians, thus encouraged, entered eagerly into commercial 
pursuits. A brisk trade with European merchants was 
quickly opened, and the harbor of Beirut, in particular, 
soon became thronged with the shipping of London and 
Marseilles." 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND KUSSO-TURKISH "WAR. 87 

Tliis auspicious state of affairs ended with the downfall 
of the Egyptian ruler. What followed this event is told 
in the words of " an illustrious Englishman " who was an 
eye-witness : 

" The Turks returned like screecliing vultures to their baffled prey. 
Every kind of appointment was openly put up to auction. All places 
of trust were filled up with men notorious for their cupidity and fan- 
aticism. Justice, which during the Egyptian rule had been purified 
of her defilements, became again contaminated with the offal of cor- 
ruption. The Christians were everywhere reviled and insulted : in 
many places were assaulted in the bazaars ; had their turbans torn off 
their heads, and were compelled to assume their old distinctive garb 
of degradation. ... A general panic seized the rayahs, and all 
commercial transactions were temporarily paralyzed." 

The English Grovernment, says Dr. Wright/ were pledged 
to see just government established in Syria, in the place 
of that which they had overthrown, and for 
a time earnest efforts were made to protect ^ ^^ ^^^pf j 
the Christians, " but," he significantly adds, 
'^the more the English interfered on this behalf the more 
bitter did their lot become, and with the departure of Lord 
Stratford de Eedcliffe from Constantinople, matters were 
allowed to drift as before." 

The Syrian Massacres of 1860 occurred while Lord 
Palmerston was still Prime Minister. Lord John Eussell, 
then British Foreign Secretary, sent Mr. 
Cyril Graham, an English gentleman of dis- ^^- GJ^almm's 
tinction, to report upon the facts. He found 
that the Druses had been set on by the Turks to slaughter 
the Maronite Christians in the villages about Beirut, and 
the Turkish soldiers had then completed the work the 
Druses had not done with satisfactory thoroughness. In 
his Eeports to the Foreign Office he says of the massacre at 
Hasbeia : 

" Many Christians whom. I have examined have sworn to me 
that they saw the soldiers taking part in the slaughter, and the 
subsequent behavior of these brutal troops to the women was 



88 THE CEIME OF CHEISTEKDOM. 

savage in the extreme. From the wounds I have seen both on 
the living and the dead, it would appear that they went to work 
with the most systematic cruelty. . . . Women the Druses did 
not slaughter, nor, for the most part, I believe, ill use ; that was 
left for the Turks and Moslems to do, and they did it. Little boys 
of four and five years old were not safe ; these would be seized 
from their mother and dashed on the ground, or torn to pieces 
before her face ; or, if her grasp was too tight, they would kill 
it on her lap ; and in some cases, to save further trouble, mother 
and child were cut down together. Many women have assured 
me that the Turkish soldiers have taken their children one leg in 
each hand, and torn them in two." 

Quite of a piece witli this is Mr. Graliam^s description 
of what he learned of the butchery at Deir-el-Kamr. 
There the Governor had first disarmed the Christian in- 
habitants, and then turned loose upon them his savage 
soldiery. In his report to Lord John Russell Mr. Graham 
says : 

" I have had a vivid description of the whole scene from some 
dozen women who were there. They have told me how, before 
their very face, they have seen husband, father, brothers, and 
children cut to pieces, and the pieces thrown in their face ; how 
they have been insulted by the Turkish soldiery. ... I have good 
reason to believe, after a careful comparison of all the accounts, 
that from 1,100 to 1,200 males actually perished in that one day. 
. . . Almost every house was burnt and the streets crowded with 
dead bodies, most of them stripped and mutilated in every possi- 
ble way. My road lay through the town, and through some of 
the streets my horse could not even pass, for the bodies were liter- 
ally piled up. . . . I saw little children, of not more than three or 
four years old, stretched on the ground, and old men with grey 
beards. In some places you could see the expression of agony, 
in others of last despair. One poor creature, on his knees, had 
been cut down as he appealed to the mercy of his murderers. I 
saw bodies without heads, and heads lying alone about the place ; 
all, all, lying unburied, to be devoured by the wild beasts." 

The testimony of Justin McCarthy,^ writing as a his- 
torian at a later date, is in substantial accord with that of 

1 History of Our Own Times, vol. 3, p. 225. 



THE SLAVIC CKISIS AND RUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 89 

the other witnesses. He confirms tlio complicity, or rather 
agency, of the Turkish Government in the massacres, and 
shows that the Turkish deeds were revolting to the nobler 
Mussulmans. He says : 

' ' Tlif Tuvki::;h soldiers did not make any attempt to protect 
them, but even, it was stated, in some cases helped the work of 
biitcheiy. In July the fanatical spirit spread to Damascus. A 
mob of Tui'kish fanatics made a general attack upon the Cliris- 
tian qviarter, and burned the greater part of it down. Tlie con- 
sulates of France, Russia, Austria, Holland, Belgium, and Greece 
were destroyed. Nearly two thousand Christians were juassacred 
in that one day's work. Many of the respectable Mussulman 
inhabitants of Damascus were most generous and brave in their 
attempts to save and shelter the unfortunate Christians ; but the 
Turkish Governor of Damascus, although lie liad a strong mili- 
tary force at his disposal, made no serious effort to interfere with 
the work of massacre ; and, as might be expected, his supineness 
was construed by the mob as an official approval of their doings, 
and they murdered with all the more vigor and zest. The fa- 
mous Algerian chief, Abd-el-Kader, was then living in Damascus, 
and he exerted himself nobly in the defence and protection of 
the Christians." 

Lord Dufferin as special Commissioner confirmed the 
Reports of Mr. Graham. He further relates his visit to 
Deir-el-Kamr, a few days after the massacre : 

"Almost every house is burned, and tlie street crowded with 
dead bodies, some of them stripped and mutilated in every possi- 
ble way. My road led through some of the streets ; my liorse 
could not even pass, for tlie bodies were literally piled up. Most 
of those I examined had many wounds, and in each case tlie 
right hand was either entirely or nearly cut off, the poor wretch, 
in default of weapons, having instinctively raised his arm toimrry 
the blow aimed at him. I saw little children of not more than 
fovir years old stretched on the ground, and old men with gray 
beards." 

When the massacres reached the Consulate of the Great 
Powers, the nations represented were naturally aroused. 
The Great Powers drew up a Convention which they forced 
Turkey to accept;, and they delegated to England and 



90 THE CEIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

France the duty of restoring order in the Lebanon region. 
When brought to face with the fact that the French soldiery 
were in Lebanon to restore order, the Sultan hypocriti- 
cally ordered the Governor of Damascus and the commander 
of the Turkish troops to be put to death, and executed 
about sixty others, many belonging to the police force, 
in Damascus. A reorganization of the government of the 
region resulted, which improved matters somewhat for a 
time. 

The massacres had clearly been conducted officially. 
Turkey was already becoming conscious of her independ- 
ence and vantage-ground as ^'^one of the Powers ^^ of 
Europe. 

We pass over the insurrection of Crete, in 1866, and 
the long horrors until it was put down in Turkish fashion, 
with English responsibility, in 1869, and pro- 
^th^^B ^^^^ ^° ^^^^ ^^ consider the condition of things that 
preceded the outbreaks in Bosnia and Herze- 
govina and in Bulgaria, in 1875-6. The brief array of 
general facts, which is all that can be here presented to 
demonstrate the failure of the Hatt and to show the con- 
dition of affairs at that time, is drawn chiefly from the 
statements of Rev. Malcolm MacColl,^ based partly upon 
his own observation in Turkey while traveling there with 
Canon Liddon, and partly upon British Consular and Par- 
liamentary documents. The main statements were con- 
firmed by Right Honorable W. E. Forster, the dis- 
tinguished statesman and orator, and by Viscount Strat- 
ford de Redcliffe, both of whom spent many years in 
Turkey ; in fact, they received confirmation from every 
source. They warrant the conclusion that the reforms 
had not been carried out. The taxation had not been 
equalized. With the Christians, it often amounted to con- 
fiscation. 

1 The Eastern Question : its Facts and Fallacies. London : 
Longmans, Green & Co., 1877. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TURKlSIl WAE. 91 

The so-called tithe was levied on all the produce of the 
ground. It was no longer a tithe ; for when Sultan Abd-ul- 
Aziz traveled in state over Europe, an ex- 
traordinary tax was laid to hear the cost of ^^^^axes *^^ 
his journey, and so the tithe became and still 
continued to be an eighth. With the extortion, it was 
oftener a sixth or a seventh. The tithes were sold by the 
government to the highest bidder, and the competition 
was so keen in ordinary times that the successful bidder 
often paid more than the entire amount of the tax. This, 
of course, meant extortion of the worst form for the 
poor rayahs. The '^spahi,^^ or tithe-farmers, instead of 
making a careful estimate of the produce, assessed it, 
without examination, far beyond its value. If the rayah 
sought redress, he could only appeal to the government 
officials who were in league with the tithe-farmer, who was 
^'frequently nothing but a dummy behind which some in- 
fluential member of the government robbed and harassed 
the Christian peasant. •'■' The peasant was compelled to 
pay the tithe not in iind but in money, and ready money 
must be paid down. The case of the poor man, who had 
not money at hand to meet these exactions, was pathet- 
ically described in the paper of the Herzegovinian in-' 
surgents to the Great Powers : -^ 

" His house may be occupied at his expense until he has paid 
the whole. He is bound to maintain and serve those who are 
quartered with him at their imperious pleasure, and his expenses 
in so doing go for nothing in the account. By way of example : 
if a person owes twenty f)iastres, and spends one hundred in the 
m.aintenance of these people, it is not taken into consideration. 
At last an arrangement is made ; the peasant acknowledges his 
debt, with double interest ; or an animal is taken for fifty piastres, 
though it may be worth one hundred or more. Many cause the 
poor people of the villages to be put in prison where they suffer 
from hunger, cold, flogging, and other ill-treatments. Some- 

1 Parliamentary Papers, No. 3. 



92 THE CRIME OE CHRISTENDOM. 

times false receipts are given, and the amount of the debt has to 
be paid again." 

This system had been extended to everything the peas- 
ant could call his own. Besides, there was the compulsory 
service for the military; the road tax; the "rad" or 
labor tax of the fortieth piastre on the imaginary earnings 
of the ray ah ; the poll-tax of 30 piastres laid upon every 
male Christian, from babe to beggar and from birth to 
death, and collected from the villages for those who can 
not pay for themselves. In this way, the rayah of average 
means paid in taxation somewhat less than 3,000 piastres 
annually. 

ISTor was this all, for in Herzegovina and Bosnia he rented 
his land from the aga, or Turkish proprietor, who extorted 
from him a fourth part of the produce obtained from the 
ground, besides gifts in produce and labor, which swelled 
the amount to three times what he produced for himself. 
All this, it must be remembered, came after the rayah had 
passed through the hands of the government and the tithe- 
farmer. 

The rights of property and person had not been se- 
cured. A Christian peasant could hold no property in 
Turkey. The few who had been foolish 

M ker ^ ©nougli to make the attempt, in reliance upon 
the promised reforms, had found themselves 
stripped of it, and helpless in the Turkish courts. Even 
the life of the rayah was held at the discretion of his Mos- 
lem neighbor. Resistance to a Turk was then, and had for 
generations been, so certain to end in assassination, that 
thought of resistance htid .-ilmost died out of the Christian 
mind. 

But the most cruel torture of all to which the rayah was 
exposed was doubtless, as Mr. MacColl wrote, '^'^ the peril 
to which the chastity of his female relations was daily 
exposed.^' The Ottoman system, which uses sensuality 
as one of its most powerful motives, put a premium upon 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND EUSSO-TUEKISH WAR. 93 

outrages upon Christian "women. All authorities agree 
concerning the helplessness of the Christians against such 
outrages to which every rayah's family was liable. Not 
to refer to the evidence in the consular reports on the 
condition of the Christians in Turkey, the then recent case 
at Batak is sufficient for present purposes. Concerning it, 
Mr. Baring despatched from Philip-popolis, November 24:, 
1876 :i 

" I suggested that the act of carrying off the girls (from Batak) 
was in itself an illegal one ; but I was told that, by Turkish law, 
a man could not be punished for carrying off a woman, provided 
he married her." 

To the Christians in Turkey, the so-called courts of 
justice were simply " legalized instruments of oppression 
and torture." Theoretically, the evidence of a Christian 
was admissible, except before the religious tribunals ; 
practically, it was inadmissible in any court. If he insisted 
on presenting it, the judge easily got rid of it by making 
him repeat, and then rejecting it for the most trifling 
variation ; or if this did not succeed, the court adjourned, 
and the Christian witness was followed home and denounced 
on some trumpery charge, and when the court met again, 
he was set aside as a notoriously bad character, or he was 
imprisoned for an hour, .and then excluded from testify- 
ing ; or, anywhere outside of Constantinople, his testimony 
was summarily set aside without even such pretexts as 
these ; or, worse than all, the vindictive Moslem pursued 
him for bringing a false accusation against a true believer, 
and he perhaps got the bastinado or the dagger. This 
was all admitted to be true, even by such advocates of the 
Turk as Mr. Grifford Pa qnive." 

In short, assurance came from all quarters that the 
Christians had not been accorded the rights promised them 

1 See Argyll on Morality in Politics, Contemporary Review, 
July, 1887, p. 327, note. 

2 Essays on Eastern Questions, p. 85. 



94 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

and that tlie Hatt-i-Humayonn of the Snltaii;, published at 

the close of the Crimean War, had been of little more avail 

than so much blank paper. Just in and 

The Hatt a g^j.Q^^j^(;[ Constantinople, under the pressure 
of foreign power, some few of its provisions 
had sometimes been forcibly carried out, but in the prov- 
inces it was a dead letter. Indeed, according to the best 
authorities, it had never to that day been proclaimed 
throughout the Turkish Empire ! 

The Turk had continued to play the Turk in Europe for 

more than twenty years, under the shadow of the Treaty 

of Paris, by the aid of the fiction of the Hatt-i-Humayoun. 

He had been relieved from the fear of insurrections from 

within and of interference from without ; and so released 

from those checks necessary to even good governments, 

and without which the peculiar vices of the Turks must 

inevitably reach a rank and terrible luxuriance. 
Arffvll*s VIgw 

The Duke of Argyll very strongly presented 

the influence of this condition — for which Grreat Britain 

was so largely responsible — upon the Turk. Writing on 

this subject he said : ^ 

" And such, accordingly, we know by overwhelming evidence to 
have been the actual results. Twenty years of peace and of protec- 
tion from external violence have seen no reform, but only a descent 
from one low level to another depth still lower, of personal corrup- 
tion, and of corresponding administrative oppression. There has 
been the confessed violation of every promise solemnly given in tlie 
face of Europe, that the Christian subjects of the Porte should be 
admitted to some of the commonest rights of humanity ; and this 
violation has gone on in the face of remonstrances, of exhortation, 
and of warnings perpetually renewed by one, or other, or by all of the 
guaranteeing and protecting powers." 

Utterly bankrupt in character, the Sublime Porte had 
made use of the Hatt as an aid in securing from the capi- 
talists of Western Europe vast loans, which 
Turkish Loans, t -, ^ t ^ • n £i , j 

had been squandered on armies and fleets, and. 

1 Contemporary Eeview, July, 1877, p. 324. 



THE SLAVIC CKISIS AXD EUSSO-TXJKKISH WAR. 95 

in luxury and vice, instead of being used to carry out tlie 
promised, reforms. Even with the addition of an extortion 
and cruelty in its taxation, such as no land under the sun 
ever before witnessed, the government at the opening of 
the Russo-Turkish War had already reached financial 
bankruptcy, and the practical repudiation of its debt of 
more than 11,000,000,000. 

The story of massacre for those twenty years, does not 
indicate that the ghost of the Hatt had brought the Turk 
to the reign of humanity. He was essentially the same as 
of old. 

In 1875 the Christian peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
found their condition beyond endurance, and rose against 
the Turk. Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minis- 
ter, with his " Semitic instincts,^' had no '^lif ^''Jf^ ^ 

' . . ' the Balkans, 

sympathy with these Christians. He ridiculed 
the reports concerning their sufferings and stood by the 
Turk. The story of robbery, impalement, rape and 
butchery was almost beyond belief. In 1876 occurred the 
^^ Bulgarian atrocities." Mr. Disraeli was in the same 
mood still. Investigation showed the hideous folly of the 
levity of the prime Minister. Says Justin McCarthy : ^ 

"Mr. Baring, the English Consul, sent out specially to Bulgaria to 
make enquiries, and who was stipposed to be in general sympathy with 
Turkey, reported that no fewer than twelve thousand persons had 
been killed in the district of Philippopolis. He confirmed substan- 
tially some of the most shocking details of the massacre of women 
and children, which had been given by Mr. MacGahan, a correspondent 
whom the Daily News had sent out to the spot, to see with his own 
eyes, and report what he saw. There was no disputing the signifi- 
cance of some of that testimony. The defenders of the Turks in- 
sisted that the only deaths were those which took place in fight ; 
insurgents on one side, Turkish soldiers on the other. But Mr. 
Baring, as well as the Daily Neivs correspondent, saw whole masses 
of the dead bodies of women and children piled up in places where 
the bodies of no combatants were to be seen. The women and 

1 History of Our Own Times, vol. 4, p. 371. 



96 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

children were simply massacred. The Turkish Government may not 
have known at first of the deeds that were done by their soldiers. 
But it is certain that, after the facts had been forced upon their 
attention, they conferred new honors on the chief perpetrators of 
the crimes which shocked the moral sense of all Europe." 

Lord Derby writing to Sir H. Elliot, British Ambassa- 
dor to the Porte, on September 21, 1876, acknowledged 
the truth of reports announcing the outrages committed on 
the Christian population of Bulgaria in these terms : -^ 

"Her Majesty's Government were prepared by the preliminary 
Reports from Mr. Baring forwarded by your Excellency, to hear that 
the crimes perpetrated by the Turkish Bashi-Bazouks and the Cir- 
cassians had been of the gravest character, and they regret to find 
from the present complete Report that these apprehensions are con- 
firmed to the fullest extent. . . . Although some of the stories which 
have been published have proved to be unfounded, there can be no 
doubt that the conduct of the Yali of Adrianople, in ordering the 
general arming of the Mussulmans, led to the assemblage of bands of 
murderers and robbers, who, under the pretext of suppressing in- 
surrection, were guilty of crimes which Mr. Baring justly describes 
as the most heinous that have stained the history of the present 
century. 

"Moreover, it is conclusively shown that not only was the 
most culpable apathy displayed by the great majority of the 
Provincial authorities in allowing or conniving at such excesses, 
but that little or nothing effectual has been done in the way of 
reparation. While 1,956 Bulgarians were arrested for complicity 
in an insurrectionary movement which was at no time of a dan- 
gerous character, only a score or so of the inurderers of unarmed 
men, women and children have been punished. 

"It would indeed appear that the authority of the Porte has 
been set at defiance, and the Turkish Government at Constanti- 
noi)le kept in ignorance of the truth. Under no circumstances 
can Her Majesty's Government suppose it j)ossible that the Porte 
could have been led to promote and decorate officials whose acts 
have been at once a disgrace and an injury to the Turkish Empire. 

' ' The massacre at Batak is reported to have taken place on the 
9tli of May last, but on the 21st of July it still appears to have 
been unknown to or overlooked by the Porte, nor were the cir- 
cumstances brought to light until discovered by Mr. Baring. By 

1 Annual Register, 1876, pt. 2, pp. 211, 212. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND KUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 97 

liis statement it appears that eighty women and girls were taken 
to Mussulman villages, of which he gives the names, and that 
they remain still there ; that the bodies of the murdered victims 
were still, at the time of his visit, lying unburied ; and that 
nothing had been done to discover or punish the perpetrators of 
tliese crimes. 

" It is unnecessary for me to refer in detail to the several pas- 
sages in Mr. Baring's Report which show how effectually fanati- 
cism and rapine have done their work on the population of this 
unhappy province. 

" Even now no serious effort has been made to redress the in- 
juries of the people, and to provide effectually for their future 
safety. The cattle tliat have been carried off and the goods that 
have been plundered have not been restored ; the houses and 
churches are left in ruins ; the people ai'e starving ; industry 
and agriculture are suspended ; and those Christian villages 
which have hitherto escaped feel no security that their turn may 
not come. 

" Acts of violence, as the Mudir at Avrat-Alan acknowledged, 
still continue, and the Porte is powerless or supine. 

" I have already informed your Excellency of the just indig- 
nation which the statements published of these atrocities have 
aroused in the people of Great Britain ; nor can I doubt that a 
similar feeling prevails throughout Europe. ..." 

The remainder of the dispatch consists of a remonstrance 
to the Porte. Tlie truly noble and Christian element in 
England was stirred at last. John Bright 
described the great uprising among the Eng- a ake 
lisli people. Mr. Gladstone came forward and 
voiced the moral sentiment and set " Christian England " 
aflame with his eloquence. In his pamphlet, "^Bulga- 
rian Horrors, and the Question of the East," ,he set forth 
the only way to permanent peace to the Christian Prov- 
inces, i. e. to turn the Turkish officials " bag and bag- 
gage " out of them. But the crafty Jew in the Prime Min- 
ister's place misrepresented and checkmated the work of 
the Christian philanthropists, and kept " Commercial Eng- 
land " true to her policy of infamy to the end. 

There is only space to give the utterances of two of the 
7 



98 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

leading advocates of a Christian policy, before passing on 

,, „ to trace briefly the course of events. Said 

Mr. Freeman. , ^ t^ ■ ,-, ■, ,-, 

Mr. I'reeman, concerning the massacres by the 

Turk in Bulgaria : 

"His doings there were nothing new, nothing wonderful. 
They were simply what the Turk always does whenever he has 
a chance. They were what the Turk did fifty years ago in Chios 
and Cyprus ; they were what he did in much later times at Da- 
mascus. They are what he is doing always on a smaller scale in 
Bulgaria, and in every other land subject to his yoke. The only 
real difference between the Turkish doings of 1876 and the Turk- 
ish doings of any other year, was that the doings of 1876 were 
done on a greater scale than any doings of the same kind that 
have happened for some years. There was indeed another dif- 
ference, namely, that the facts were bi'ought home to the minds 
of the mass of the English in a way that earlier facts of the same 
kind had never been brought home. The mass of Englishmen 
learned, for the first time, what the Turk really was." 

Mr. Gladstone brought out with great clearness and 

force the peculiar features of the " Bulgarian Horrors, " 

which were indicative of the contempt of the 

Sultan for the requirements of the Hatt-i- 

Humayonn : 

"The essence of the case of 1876 lies, not in the massacres 
themselves, but in the conduct of the Porte about the massacres ; 
the falsehood, the chicane, the mockery and perversion of justice, 
the denial of redress, the neglect and punishment of the good 
Mohammedans, and, finally, the rewards and promotions of the 
bad in pretty close proportion to their badness." 

These facts and statements show that twenty years of ex- 
periment had demonstrated the Hatt to be a dismal failure. 
Christian Europe began to be roused to some sense of the 
state of things and of the responsibility of Christendom 
for it. 

II. The Crisis that Led to Eussiaist Interventiois". 

Eussian intervention in the Slavic Crisis will best 
be understood in the light of two things : 



THE SLAVIC CEISIS AND KUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 99 

1st. The Diplomatic Struggle of which it was the 
outcome and culmination. 

2d. A survey of European Turkey and its Peoples at the 
time of that intervention. 

(I.) The Diplomatic Struggle BETVi^EEisr CHEisTiA]sr 
Europe and " Commercial En^glan"d." 

The course of events up to 1875 demonstrated suffici- 
ently for all time, that in the Crimea with the aid of France 
''Commercial England^' had halked the efforts of Eussia 
in hehalf of the Christians in the Turkish Empire, de- 
posed the Czar from his place as their protector, and placed 
the " unspeakable Turk " in a position to carry on his 
butcheries without let or hinderance. England had joined 
France in sowing the wind and was reaping the whirlwind. 
The Turk was making the most of the privileges con- 
ferred upon him by these representatives of Christendom 
through the Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris. 

The debt of 11,000,000,000 that the Turk had rolled 
up during this period, under the protecting ^gis of 
Great Britain, now began to be an increasingly important 
factor in the Eastern Question. So much of it was owed 
to subjects of Great Britain that "British interests ^^ 
henceforth had "British interest^' added to 

it as a new element. That interest must be interests 

and Interest, 
collected by the Turk, and this gave new im- 
pulse to his work of robbery and butchery. The most 
strenuous efforts of the tax-gatherer were at this time largely 
directed to the Slavic belt of European Turkey, in which 
the Turk thought he could operate freely, since Eussia had 
been warned off by the Treaty of Paris. As the bankruptcy 
of the Turk tended to the lapse of the interest due to 
British bondholders, or to its payment by the issue of more 
and worthless bonds, the pressure of the British Shylock 
was naturally increased and the pressure of the Turkish 
tax-gatherer still more increased. As the Slavic Christians 
LofC. 



100 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

became impoverished, the robbery and butchery, the tor- 
ture and rape, became unendurable, and driven to despera- 
tion they attempted resistance and appealed to Christian 
Europe. 

For the first time in the long history of Turkish atroci- 
ties Christian Europe seemed to rouse itself to the task 
of delivering the much- suffering millions of Christians. 
The history of the years from 1875 to the ratification of 
the Treaty of Berlin is the story of the hideous and all 
but successful struggle of " Commercial England, ^^ under 
the baleful leadership of Beaconsfield, to thwart the efforts 
of all the rest of Christian Europe to deliver the Christians 
from slavery to the Turkish monster. It is one of the 
blackest pages God ever permitted to be written in the 
history of any nation. 

The stages in the course of that struggle are marked by the 
Appeal of the Slavs to the Great Powers of Europe, the 
Consular Delegation, the Andrassy Note, the 
th^*st^^ °^le ^®^li^ Memorandum, the proposed Collective 
Note of Austria, Russians proposal of coercion, 
the Conference at Constantinople and the Protocol, and 
the final and hopeless deadlock of diplomacy. These were 
at the same time successive stages in the progress of the 
European Powers in reaching the official verdict that the 
Hatt-i-Humayoun was a dead-letter and the Turk incorri- 
gible. 

The utmost limit of endurance was reached in the seven- 
ties. Realizing that they owed their continued slavery and 
suffering to the interference of the outside Powers, the 
Christians of Southeastern Europe plead to be let alone. 
It was in September, 1875, that the insurgents of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina presented their Document of Grievances 
to the representatives of the Great Powers, closing with 
a pathetic appeal to Christian Europe. " In order to get 
out of of this misery," they asked to be let alone by outside 
powers, in their struggle for freedom, or that some Chris- 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND EUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 101 

tiaii Power sliould give tliem some corner of land for a home, 
or that the Powers should intercede with the Sultan to 
secure them autonomy, or that the Powers should at once 
occupy the principalities with a strong body of troops and 
secure their just rights.-^ They gained the ear of Europe. 

So serious had matters become, in the view of several 
of the Great Powers, that a Consular Delegation of repre- 
sentatives of the signatories .of the Treaty of 
Paris was proi^osed, to visit the insurgents 1- The Consular 
and inquire into their grievances. '' Com- ^ ^^^ ^°"* 
mercial England " planted herself in the way of the other 
Powers. 

Lord Derby, the British Foreign Secretary, as represent- 
ing Beaconsfield, strenuously objected to the Delegation, 
but at last consented to it at the urgent request of the 
Porte, who felt that the safety of Turkey depended upon 
England's active connection with such an inquiry. Lord 
Derby put the arguments against the Christian Powers into 
the mouth of the Turk. In a second despatch to the 
Grand Vizier, referring to a first, he said : ^ 

" I therefore informed your Excellency, in nfiy despatch of the 
24th of August, that her Majesty's Government consented to this 
step with reluctance, as they doubted the expediency of intervention 
of foreign Consuls. Such an intervention, I remarked, was scarcely 
compatible with the independent authority of the Porte ; it offered an 
inducement to insurrection as a means of appealing to foreign sym- 
pathy against Turkish rule; audit might not improbably open the 
way to further diplomatic interference in the intei-national affairs of 
the Empire." 

He did more, he sent British Consul Holmes — a Philo- 
Turk equal to a Turk in prejudice and mendacity — ham- 
pered with instructions that necessarily made his mission 
abortive, and then, on the ground of his mendacious report 
— proved mendacious beyond question — stood by the Turk 

1 Parliamentary Papers, No. 2, pp. 30-40. 

2 Eastern Question, Rev, MalcQlra MaeCoU, p. 449-50, 



102 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

and opposed the proposed action to remedy the dreadful 
condition of affairs. The Grand Vizier had for this very 
purpose entreated him to appoint Consul Holmes to stay 
action that seemed otherwise inevitable ! Consul Holmes 
was sent as the British Delegate to meet the insurgents 
and bring them into negotiation with the Turkish Com- 
mission, in accordance Avith instructions formally approved 
by Lord Derby, on September 15, 1875. Two Turkish 
battalions took advantage of this meeting to massacre these 
insurgents who had been promised protection ! The in- 
famous Chefket Pasha described the massacre as " clever 
strategy." It was what the Turk had in view when he 
urged upon England her approval of the Consular Delega- 
tion. If the leaders could be got hold of the insurrection 
would collapse. Canon MacColl puts the Turkish scheme 
on this wise : ^ 

" But the difficulty was how to catch the leaders. In this dil- 
emma the Consular Delegation offered the very trap for which the 
Porte was searching. Both for this reason, and also because the 
Porte saw In the Consular Delegation a device by which it might ' re- 
lieve itself of all responsibility,' it urged Lord Derby to allow Consul 
Holmes to join the other Consuls.' 

For all which perfidy and treachery the Turk was duly 
grateful. Indeed, the Turkish Foreign Minister, in a 
letter to the British Minister under date of March 15, 1876, 
conveyed to him the thanks of the Sublime Porte for " the 
friendly disposition evinced by Mr. Holmes on this occasion, 
and the perfect tact with which he has discharged his deli- 
cate duties ! " 

And Lord Derby, in a despatch of March 28, wrote to 
Sir. H. Elliot, the British Minister at Constantinople : 

"I have to request that your Excellency will communicate the con- 
tents of this letter to Mr. Holmes, and express to the Porte the satis- 
faction with which Her Majesty's Government have received this 
testimony to Mr. Holmes's abilities ! " 

1 MacColl, The Eastern Question, p. 453, 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND EUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 103 

In the meantime the Anstro-Hungarian Cabinet had 
come to an altogether different view of the state of affairs 
in Turkey. Closer relations and racial sym- 
pathies with the Bosnians had led them to ?" ^^^■»^' 
^ 4? 1 • X- .• 1 . -, drassyNote. 

a more careiul investigation, and convinced 

them that the insurrection must with the opening of spring 
spread so as to take in all JSTorthern Turkey down to the 
Macedonian belt, and that a general European war might 
thus be brought on. The result was the sending out to the 
Foreign Ministers of the various Powers — by Count An- 
drassy of the Austro-Hungarian Cabinet, with the sanc- 
tion of Germany and Eussia — of the Andrassy ISTote, for 
the purpose of bringing about concerted action to remedy 
the existing evil condition and to avert the dangers that 
seemed imminent. 

The Andrassy ISTote was a most luminous presentation of 
the general condition of Bosnia and those regions under 
Turkish rule of which it was fairly representative.^ It 
recounted the action of the Powers up to date ; declared 
the impotence and failure of the Sultan's Irade of October 
2, and the Firman of December 12 ; called attention to the 
menace to the peace of Europe from the anarchy in the 
!N"orthwestern Provinces of Turkey ; and insisted that the 
" remedial measures must be sought for in a double di- 
rection ; primarily on moral, secondarily on material, 
grounds." It recounted the fundamental causes of the 
difficulties and disintegration : in the bitter antagonism be- 
tween the Cross and Crescent which the Hatt-i-sheriff of 
1839, the Hatt-i-Humayoun of 1856, and firmans and 
irad^s, had failed to remove or lessen ; in the system of farm- 
ing taxes, which, even under pretense of reform, had been 
made manyf old worse in all its features of extortion and 
robbery ; and in the practical absorption of all the land by 
the Government, the mosques, and the Moslem, resulting 

^ For an account of the Note and its terms, see Annual Regis- 
ter, 1876, pp. 202-207, 



104 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. ' 

in a condition worse than tlie serfdom which the Turk 
had professed to abolish after the suppression of the insur- 
rection in Bosnia in 1850-51. The N"ote adds : 

" If we reflect on how little belief the promises of the Sublime Porte 
are accorded by the Christian population, we can not shut our eyes 
to the fact that the promulgated reforms can inspire the necessary 
confidence only on the condition that a proper institution to guaran- 
tee their bona-fide application be created. If their execution was in- 
trusted to the governments of the province the mistrust to which I 
refer could not be overcome. Therefore, it would be necessary to 
establish a commission of the state deputies of the country, composed 
of one half Mussulmans and the other half Christians, to be elected 
by the inhabitants of the Province according to a method to be deter- 
mined upon by the Sublime Porte. 

" I have thus laid bare the concessions that it would be necessary to 
grant to the revolted provinces before we could yield to any well- 
formed hopes of pacification. These concessions are as follows : 

" Full and complete religious liberty. 

" The abolition of the system of farming-out tlie revenues. A law 
that would guarantee that the direct taxes of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
be applied to the interests of the respective provinces under the con- 
trol of a medium constituted in accordance with the terms of the fir- 
man of December the 12th. 

" The formation of a special commission, composed of equal num- 
bers of Mussulmans and Christians to control the administration of 
the reforms proposed by the Powers as well as those proclaimed in the 
irade of October tlie second and in the firman of December the twelfth, 

"Lastly, the amelioration of the agrarian condition of the rural 
population." 

The purpose was to bring to bear upon the Sultan a pres- 
sure from the Powers that he could not resist. The Note 
proposes^ in conclusion, the method to be pursued : 

"If, as I hope, the views of the . . . Government concur with ours, 
we would suggest to it, out of regard for the dignity and independence 
of the Porte, not to address our counsels to it in a collective note, 
but simply to instruct our representatives at Constantinople to act 
conjointly and in an identical manner with the Government of the 
Sultan in the ideas that we have developed. 

" Your Excellency will please read this despatch to the Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, and leave a copy of the same with himj and I shall 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RtrSSO-flJEKISH WAR. 10.5 

feel obliged to you if you "will let me know as soon as possible what 
impression it made on his Excellency." 

The Note was despatched on December 30, 1875. The 
other Powers were in favor of the course proposed in the 
Note. Great Britain as usual objected, and 
stood in the way of united action. Writing OBBosition 
irom Constantinople to Lord Derby, of the 
Note, on January 17, 1876, Sir H. Elliot informed him, that 
" the proposals with which it concludes, if put into an 
identic instruction to the representatives here (which is 
understood to be what is intended) would, in my opinion, 
be accepted by the Porte without much difficulty." ^ That 
was just what Lord Derby did not want ; he protested 
against it, and so the hopes of the Christians were again 
dashed by British diplomacy. As Count Beust said, the 
Andrassy Note " was not regarded by the Austrian govern- 
ment as merely good advice addressed to the Porte. They 
wanted a substantial pledge for the carrying out of the 
reforms. Lord Derby objected, and applied to the Note 
his usual destructive criticism. Its proposed reforms would 
interfere with the Turk and with the collection of the rev- 
enue necessary to pay the interest on the Turkish bonds 
held in England. In short, after giving the Turk a full 
supply of arguments against the Note, he declined to have 
anything to do with a written note of the Powers, and 
'^ instructed her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople 
to confine his rej)resentations to giving a general support 
to Count Andrassy's proposals to oral communications." ^ 

Thus assured of British support the Porte accepted the 
Andrassy Note in a general way, and issued an Irade of 
reforms that it never attempted nor intended to carry 
out. 

But the Christian Powers of Europe were now thoroughly 

1 Parliamentary Papers of 1876, No. 2, p. 101. 

2 See Parliamentary Papers, of 1876, No. 3, p. 95 ; Annual Register, 
1876. 



106 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

aroused and in earnest, and were not yet willing to be thns 
thwarted in carrying out the great moral idea 
Me^o^randum. ^^^^^ "'^^^ taken possession of them. They pre- 
pared and sent out to the Cabinets, at the 
opening of May, 1876, the Berlin Memorandum. The 
center of the movement had been changed, probably for 
the sake of greater effectiveness, from Austro-Hungary to 
Germany. The ncAV developments of Turkish fanaticism, 
shown in the recent outbreak at Salonica, and the murder 
of the European consuls in broad daylight, furnished 
abundant reason for their action. The Memorandum was 
characterized by wise statesmanship and high moral tone. 
"We give the main features : ^ 

" The three Imperial Courts believe themselves called upon to act 
in concert so as to ward off the dangers of the situation, the other 
Great Christian Powers concurring. To their minds tlie present state 
of things in Turkey calls for a double series of measures. 

"1. It appears to them urgent beyond all things for Europe to in- 
tervene in such a manner as to prevent the recurrence of such events 
as have recently occurred at Salonica, and which threaten to repro- 
duce themselves at Smyrna and at Constantinople. To effect this the 
Great Powers should mutually agree to take steps wherever necessary 
to protect their countrymen and the Christian inhabitants of the Otto- 
man Empire. 

" This purpose can be attained by a general understanding concern- 
ing the despatch of sliips-of-war to the menaced ports, and by the 
issue of combined instructions to the commandants of these vessels, 
to be followed up in the event of circumstances compelling them to re- 
sort to an armed operation for the maintenance of order and tran- 
quillity. 

" 2. However, this purpose will be only imperfectly accomplished 
if the original cause of these disturbances is not diverted by the prompt 
pacification of Bosnia and Herzegovina." 

The Memorandum recounted the failure of the past efforts 
of the Powers in these directions ; the impossibility of any 
faith in Turkey on the part of the Christian subjects ; 
the hypocrisy of the Porte in all its ^professions and procla- 

1 See Parliamentary Papers, 1S7G, No. 2, p. 90 ; Annual Eegister, 1876. 



THE SLAVIC CllISlS AND E,USSO-TUE,K:iSH WAR. 107 

mations of reform and amelioration. It affirmed and 
emphasized tlie moral rights of the Powers to protect the 
Christians and to watch over the carrying out of the Turkish 
promises of reform, and proposed to call for a suspension 
of hostilities for the adjustment of the claims of the in- 
surgents and their oppressors. It proposed the urging of 
conferences between the Porte and the delegates of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, on the basis of the demands that had 
been formulated by the latter, and which were considered 
suitable to serve as a starting point in the discussion. These 
points were as follows : 

" 1. The material for tlie rebuilding of houses and churches shall 
be furnished to the returning refugees ; their livelihood shall be 
assured luitil they can exist on the fruits of their labors. 

"2. Inasmuch as the distribution of relief depends upon a Turkish 
Commissioner, he shall be in perfect accord with the measures to be 
taken by the Mixed Commission, mentioned in the Note of December 
30th, in order to guarantee the proper administration of the reforms 
and to control their execution. This Commission will be presided 
over by a Christian of ITerzegovlna, and be composed of natives rep- 
resenting faitlifully both the religions of the country ; they shall be 
elected immediately that the armistice has caused the suspension of 
hostilities. 

" 3. For the purpose of avoiding all collisions counsel shall be given 
at Constantinople to concentrate all the Turkish troops, at least 
until the pacification of the public, at certain convenient points. 

" 4. The Christians shall retain their arms just as the Mussulmans. 

"5. The Consuls or delegates of the Powers shall exercise super- 
vision over the administration of the reforms, in general, and over 
questions relative to repatriation, in particular." 

In conclusion, the Memorandum, for the purpose of 
making its provisions efficacious, read as follows : 

"If, however, the armistice were to expire without the efforts of 
the Powers having succeeded in attaining the end they have in view, 
the three Imperial Courts believe that it would become necessary to 
add to their diplomatic action the sanction of an agreement in view 
of the opposition to efficacious measures taken in the interest of 
general peace, to check the evil and to prevent its development." 

Lord Derby rejected the Memorandum without even 



108 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

consulting his Cabinet, and as usual supplied the Turk 
with arguments against the course proposed 
^""oSion^' ^y *^^® Powers. As British Secretary of For- 
eign Affairs he received the document on May 
15, and hastened to formulate and forward the objections 
of " Commercial England" to the Memorandum. 

To the first proposal, that of giving heljD to the return- 
ing refugees, he objected on three grounds : 

(1) " It would cost a large sum of money, which the Porte 
did not possess and could not borrow." 

(2) "It would be unjust to make the Porte responsible 
for repairing destruction which had been, in the main, the 
work of the insurgents themselves." 

(3) " It would be little better than a system of indis- 
criminate almsgiving, which would prove utterly demoral- 
izing to any country." 

To the second proposal, that for a Mixed Commission, he 
objected that it would infringe the authority of the Sultan. 

To the third proposal, that of an Armistice, he objected 
that it "might interfere with the military plans of the 
Porte." 

To the fourth proposal, that the Christians should be 
allowed to possess or to retain arms, he objected that *'^if 
the insurgents were to return armed to meet the Mussul- 
mans, also retaining their arms, a collision would be inevit- 
able." 

Such is the substance of Lord Derby's famous reply to 
the Berlin Memorandum, a reply which " Commercial Eng- 
land" "greeted with acclamations for its courage and 
wisdom." Canon MacColl wrote soon after : ^ 

" Its courage, I admit, can not easily be overrated. Its wisdom may 
be read in the light of the conflagrations which followed in Bosnia, 
Jn Bulgaria, and inServia, and which England's rejection of the Berlin 
Memorandum had no small share in kindling." 

It mattered little that the Powers that sent out the Mem- 
1 The Eastern Question, p. 462. 



I 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TUEKISH WAE. 109 

orandum annihilated the special pleadings of England's 
Foreign Secretary. He cared nothing for the Christians 
of Southeastern Europe, but was deeply interested in carry- 
ing Turkey safely through her diplomatic troubles. He 
was doing this for " British interests " and "'British inter- 
est." He regarded his success in thwarting the purposes 
of all Europe in a great humanitarian, moral and Christian 
movement, as one of the most noteworthy of British tri- 
umphs. 

Canon MacColl in 1877 wrote of the reception of the 
Memorandum in England, and of Lord Derby's connection 
with it, in the following terms : ^ 

' ' The reception given to tliat document in England is one of tlie 
most liumilating cliapters in this controversy. Lord Derby had at 
last exalted tlie horn of John Bull, and we were all singing 'Rule 
Britannia ' at the top of our voices. The British lion, after years of 
humilation, had at length whisked up his drooping tail, bearded the 
Russian bear, and sent him grunting back to his snows and forests. 
The alliance of the three Emperors was dissolved, and Austria, 
France, and Italy were delivered, by an unwonted display of British 
pluck and diplomatic wisdom, from the bondage of the two imperious 
and imperial chancellors." 

The Great European Powers except England — Prus- 
sia, Germany, Austria, France and Italy — were now 
y thoroughly in earnest in their desire to save ^ conference 
the Christians in Turkey from destruction, of Constan- 
and in cordial agreement on three points : nnopie. 

First, that the true origin of the disturbances in Turkey 
was the atrocious misgovernment of the Porte ; 

Secondly, that some measure of self-government for the 
disturbed provinces was a sine qua non of peace ; 

Thirdly, that the promises of the Turkish Government 
were absolutely valueless, and that consequently coercion, 
in one shaj)e or another, was essential. 

This appears from the English Blue Books. 

In August, 1876, Austria proposed that the Powers should 
1 The Eastern Question, p. 458. 



110 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

formulate tlieir demands and present tliem in a Collective 

Note to Turkey. England considered tlie 

^™^J^°" proposal "highly objectionable." Late in 

September Eussia proposed coercion, in the 

following terms : An Austrian force should occupy Bosnia, 

and a Eussian force Bulgaria, while the united fleets of the 

Powers should enter the Bosporus. Prince Gortchakoff 

expressed his belief that, if the Powers were agreed and 

in earnest, the mere " threat of these measures would 

be sufficient to bring the Turks to their senses." He 

also advised Lord Derby that if England thought the first 

two propositions objectionable, Eussia would propose only 

the third. The other Powers were ready to agree to the 

proposal of Eussia, but Lord Derby again objected. 

Balked in their efforts at every turn by this iniquitous, 
heathen British diplomacy, the Great Powers called a 
Conference upon Turkish affairs to meet in Constantinople. 

The Conference met December 20, 1876, inviting Tur- 
key to sit with them, and after a month of deliberation, 
all except England were agreed upon the neces- 

British Op- g-|.y Q^ ^ Protocol presenting substantially 
the same terms as the Andrassy Note and the 
Berlin Memorandum. 

Lord Derby had sent Lord Salisbury to represent Eng- 
land in that Conference, and set to work himself, in con- 
junction with the wily and execrable Midhat Pasha, to 
prevent its success. The dujDlicity and treachery of Derby's 
proceedings under the inspiration of Beaconsfield are almost 
beyond belief. On the day after the Conference met, he 
wrote a dispatch to the British delegate (that would not 
reach Constantinople until the opening of January), ad- 
vising him " that her Majesty's Government had decided 
that England will not assent to, or assist in, coercive mea- 
sures, military or naval, against the Porte." -^ This same 
information, which would not reach Lord Salisbury until 
1 Blue Book Xo. 2, p. 62. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TUEKISH WAR. Ill 

ten or twelve days after the Conference opened, Lord 
Derby, according to his own subsequent confession, had 
communicated to Musurus Paslia, the Turkish Minister 
to England, on December 19th, the day before the Confer- 
ence opened, assuring him that "England did not medi- 
tate coercion in the event of the Porte refusing the pro- 
posals of the Conference ! " On December 24th the follow- 
ing telegram reached Lord Derby from Safvet Pasha, giving 
effusive expression of the gratitude of Midhat Pasha for 
the assurance of British aid given to the Turkish Minis- 
ter and communicated by him to the Porte. That tele- 
gram is as follows : 

"I have read it to the Grand Vizier. His Higliness received 
tliis communication witli deep gratitude, and begs you to express to 
Ilis Excellency, Lord Derby, his aclcnowledgments. You will ex- 
plain to his Lordship, in tlie name of the Grand Vizier, that the Sub- 
lime Porte reckons more than ever on the kind support of tlie Govern- 
ment of Her Britannic Majesty, under the difficult circumstances 
we are passing through. The great wisdom and spirit of justice 
which distinguish the eminent Minister who directs with such loy- 
alty the foreign relations of England form a sure guarantee for us, 
that he will gladly give us a new proof of his kindness and valued 
friendship." 

Informed thus beforehand that Turkey had nothing to 
fear from England, she chose to reject the proposals of the 
Conference. Midhat Pasha was naturally averse 
to agreeing to any terms proposed. Meanwhile Rgass red 
Lord Salisbury, a man naturally of quite differ- 
ent stamp and principles from Derby and Beaconsfield, was 
laboring earnestly for the success of the Conference. Lest 
Lord Salisbury should succeed, in spite of the secret dispatch 
to the Porte, Lord Derby wrote him January 13 : 

"But having reference to the Conference breaking up without re- 
sult, it will be necessary to avoid all appearance of menace, and 
to hold no language that can be construed as pledging her Majesty's 
Government to enforce those proposals at a later date." ^ 

1 Blue Book No. 2, p. 26L 



112 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENBOM. 

Lord Derby had already warned France against expect- 
ing any British aid in a policy of coercion. Moreover, 
he steadily refused to unite with the other Powers in pre- 
senting any effective Note or Protocol to the Porte. He 
thus succeeded in balking the Conference and rendering its 
work abortive. 

The proposals of the Conference, not being backed by 

united action of the Powers, were rejected on the 20th of 

January, 1877, two days after they had been 

Eeiecte/ presented to the Porte, who , however lavish of 
promises, declined all performances and all 
guarantees. The Turk would do nothing unless forced by 
foreign armies, and Lord Derby had practically secured him 
against that. The Conference — apparently too much under 
the influence of the old "diplomacy," and distracted by 
too many jealousies to agree upon an effective armed in- 
tervention, but really balked in its purpose by the intrigues 
of treacherous Albion — adjourned, leaving the helpless 
Christians to their fate, and the "incorrigible Turk "to 
his own will. 

The Conference of Constantinople adjourned early in 
1877, leaving the Turk, by the grace of Great Britain, 
master of the situation. Through the perversity of " Com- 
mercial England," under the lead of Beaconsfield and 
Derby, he had been permitted to declare himself absolutely 
independent, and had been practically absolved from all 
liability to European interference. He could make j^ro- 
clamation of reforms, if he chose and when he chose, and 
disregard these proclamations at his pleasure. 

Indeed, the wily Turk had made good use of his proc- 
lamation and reform-on-paper business, from the ojaening 
of the Conference, issuing a complete scheme 

^s'^h'^^^^^ of reforms and giving Turkey a Constitutional 
Government — all on paper ! Justin McCarthy 
thus describes the scheme and its outcome : ^ 

1 A History of Our Own Times, vol. 4, pp. 378, 379. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND EUSSO-TURKISH WAE,. 113 

"The Turkish statesmen at first attempted to put off the diplo- 
matists of the West by the announcement that tlie Sultan had 
granted a constitution to Turkey, and that there was to be a parlia- 
ment at which representatives of all the provinces were to speak up 
for themselves. There was in fact a Turkish Parlianient called to- 
gether. The first meeting of the conference was disturbed by the 
sound of salvos of cannon to celebrate the opening of the first Con- 
stitutional Assembly of Turkey. Of course the Western statesmen 
could not be put off by an announcement of this kind. They knew 
well enough what a Turkish Parliament must mean. A parliament 
is not made by the decree of an autocrat calling a numl5fer of men 
into a room and bidding them debate and divide. To have a parlia- 
ment there must, first of all, be something like a free people. Europe 
had seen a brand-new Egyptian Parliament created not long before, 
and had felt at first a sort of languid curiosity about it ; and then 
after a while learned that it had sunk into the ground or faded away 
somehow without leaving any trace of its constitutional existence. It 
seems almost superfluous to say that the Turkish Parliament was 
ordered to disapj)ear very soon after the occasion passed away for 
trying to deceive the great European Powers. Evidently Turkey had 
got it into her head that the English Government would at the last 
moment stand by her, and would not permit her to be coerced." 

To say the least, that adjournment was the solemn judg- 
ment of the Christian Powers, that the Porte ought no 
longer to be upheld in his course in Europe, and their sol- 
emn verdict that the experiment of the Hatt-i-Humayoun 
was an absolute failure. In the eyes of Europe and the 
world , the mission of the Turk, as a ruler over Christians, had 
come to an end. The lapse of the half century had made that 
the judgment of Europe, and removed one great obstacle to 
the settlement of the Eastern Question. The Ottoman^s 
claims to the sovereignty over the twelve or fifteen million 
Christians of Europe had no just basis in his character, in 
his past career, or in his present performances or promises. 

The Powers seemed at last disheartened and Eussia was 
left, at the opening of 1877, practically alone as a friend 
of the oppressed Christians. On the 19th of 
January of that year, Prince Gortschakoff, ad- "march 3X ° 
dressing Count Schpuvaloff, Russian AmbaS' 



^j 



114 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

sador at the British Court, from St. Petersburg, made the 
following inquiry : ^ 

"His Majesty (the Czar of Russia) is desirous of knowing the lim- 
its within which the Cabinets with whom we (Russians) liave till now 
endeavored, and still desire, so far as may be possible, to proceed 
in common, are willing to act. . . . The refusal of the Turkish Gov- 
ernment (to accede to the wishes of Europe as expressed in the Prot- 
ocol) threatens both the dignity and the tranquillity of Europe. It 
is necessary for us to know what the Cabinet, with whom we have 
hitherto acted in common, propose to do with a view of meeting this 
refusal, and insuring the execution of their wishes." 

The Earl of Derby wrote to Lord Augustus Loftus, 
British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, on February 15, 

that the (jovernment had '^ determined that 
^''iSa^''* it would be better to defer their reply to it 

until events should have developed them- 
selves." On March 3, 1877, Prince Gortschakoff through 
Lord Loftus requested the British Government to delay 
their reply to his note of January 19, until they received 
certain explanations which the Eussian Government had 
to offer. On March 13th the Earl of Derby wrote to Lord 
Loftus informing him that Count Schouvaloff had called 
upon him with a draft Protocol which his Government 
proposed for signature by the six Powers. Derby presented 
it to the British Cabinet council in the afternoon, and then 
again saw Count Schouvaloff, whom he informed "that 
Her Majesty's Government were ready to agree in princi- 
ple to such a Protocol, providing he could come to an un- 
derstanding as to its terms."' 

On the same day was sent the following important dis- 
patch, which casts much light on the situation and the 
views of Eussia : 

" The Eakl of Dekby to Lokd A. Loftus. 

" FoBEiGN Office, March 13, 1877. 
"MyLobd, — The Russian Ambassador, when handing to me the 
draft Protocol inclosed in my dispatch of this day's date, accompanied 

iPor "Substance of Despatches, etc., on the Protocol of 1877," se© 
Annual Register, 1877, pt. 2, pp. 207-215, 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND EUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 115 

it by a statement of the views and wishes of his Government to the 
following effect: — 

"The object of General Ignatieff's journey, Count Schouvaloff 
stated, had been to furnish explanations as to the real views of 
the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and to facilitate a pacific solu- 
tion. 

" After the sacrifices which Eussia had imposed upon herself, the 
stagnation of her industry and of her commerce and the enormous 
expenditure incurred by the mobilisation of 500,000 men, she could 
not retire nor send back her troops without having obtained some 
tangible result as regards the improvement of the condition of the 
Christian population of Turkey. The Emperor was sincerely desirous 
of peace, but not of peace at any price. 

" The Governments of the other Powers were at this moment pre- 
paring their answers to the Russian Circular. The Russian Govern- 
ment would not express any opinion by anticipation on these replies, 
but they foresaw in them the possibility of a great danger. For if 
the replies were not identical, what would be the position of the 
Imperial Cabinet ? The agreement of the Powers, so fortunately 
established at the Conference, might be broken up in consequence 
of the shades of opinion manifested in the replies of the several 
cabinets ; w^ould not that be a determining cause to induce Russia 
to seek for a solution, either by means of a direct understanding with 
the Porte, or by force of arms ? 

"Under these circumstances it appears to the Russian Govern- 
ment that the most practical solution, and the one best fitted to secure 
the maintenance of general peace, would be the signature by the 
Powers of a Protocol which should, so to speak, terminate the in- 
cident. 

"This Protocol might be signed in London by the representatives 
of the Great Powers and under the direct inspiration of the Cabinet 
of St. James. 

" The Protocol would contain no more than the principles upon 
which the several Governments would have based their reply to the 
Russian Circular. It would be desirable that it should affirm that 
the present state of affairs was one which concerned the whole of 
Europe, and should place on record that the improvement of the con- 
dition of the Christian population of Turkey will continue to be an 
object of interest to all the Powers, 

" The Porte having repeatedly declared that it engaged to introduce 
reforms, it would be desirable to enumerate them on the basis of 
Saf vet Pasha' s Circular. In this way there could be no subsequent 
misunderstanding as to the promises made by Turkey. 



116 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

"As a period of some montlis would not be sufficient to accom- 
plish, these reforms, it would be preferable not to fix any precise 
limit of time. It would rest with all the Powers to determine by 
general agreement whether Turkey was progressing in a satisfactory 
manner in her work of regeneration. 

"The Protocol should mention that Europe will continue to watch 
the progressive execution of the reforms by means of their diplo- 
matic representatives. 

"If the liopes of the Powers should once more be disappointed, 
and the condition of the Christian subjects of the Sultan should 
not be improved, the Powers would reserve to themselves to consider 
in common the action which they would deem indispensable to 
secure the well-being of the Christian population of Turkey, and in 
the interests of the general peace. 

" Count Schouval off hoped that I should appreciate the moderate 
and conciliatory spirit which actuated his Government in this ex- 
pression of their views. They seemed to him to contain nothing in- 
compatible with the principles on which the policy of England was 
based, and their application would secure the maintenance of the 
general peace. 

"I made a suitable acknowledgment of his Excellency's com- 
munication, reserving any expression of opinion until I had an op- 
portmiity of consulting my colleagues. 

" I am, etc., 

(Signed) "Derby. 



,^ " 



There is not space to give here the full text of this last 
effort to bring the Turk to his senses and to preserve 
the peace of Europe. The Protocol opened as follows : 

" The Powers who have undertaken in common the pacification of 
the East, and have with that view taken part in the Conference of 
Constantinople, recognise that the surest means of attaining the object, 
which they have proposed to themselves, as before all to maintain the 
agreement so liappily established between them, and jointly to affirm 
afresh the common interest which they take in the improvement of 
the condition of the Christian populations of Turkey and in the re- 
forms to be introduced in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria, which 
the Porte has accepted on condition of itself carrying them into 
execution." 

Having recognized the professed " good intentions of 
the Porte/' and set forth what tlie Powers deemed '^ in- 




I 



Enpnivtd by Kdw^ V/ullcr 



LonffTXums, G7-een.& Co,Lortdon/,2!reM'Ybr'h,d<SomJfay. 



THE SLAVIC ClilSlS AND IIUSSO-TTJRKISH WAE. 117 

dispensable to the tranquillity of Europe/' the Protocol 
ended as follows : 

" The Powers propose to watch carefully, by means of their repre- 
sentatives at Constantinople and their local agents, the manner in 
which tlie promises of tlie Ottoman Grovernment are carried into 
elTcct. 

" If tlieir hopes slioiild once more be disappointed, and if the 
condition of tlie Christian subjects of tlie Sultan should not be im- 
proved in a manner to prevent the return of the complications whicli 
periodically disturb the peace of the East, they tliink it right to de- 
clare that such a state of affairs would be incompatible with tlieir in- 
terests and tliose of Europe in general. In such a case they reserve 
to themselves to consider in common tlie means which they may 
deem best fitted to secure the well-being of the Christian populations 
and the interests or the general peace." 

"Done at London, March 31, 1876." 

It was signed by Ministers Beust^ L. d'Harcourt, Derby, 
L. F. Menalrea, Schouvaloff, representing the five great 
Powers interested. 

Even Midhat Pasha declared that this Protocol — which 
was another effort of the Eussian Government to avoid 
war — " had in it nothing in any sense com- 
promising the integrity and independence of °perfidy^ ^ 
the [Turkish] Empire." " But Lord Derby, 
true to the last to his policy of isolation, appended to the 
Protocol a declaratian which rendered it nugatory, and 
encouraged the Turks to reject it in tones of arrogant 
contumely." 

(II.) EuEOPEAisr Turkey at the Opekhstg of the War. 

A brief survey of European Turkey and its peoples at 
the opening of the Russo-Turkish War is requisite to an 
understanding of the outcome of that war.-^ 

To the North of the Danube, on the borders of Russia, 

1 See Map showing the Distribution of the Eaces of European 
Tm-key. 



118 THE CRIME OF CHMSTENDOM. 

lay Eoumania, the home of the Wallachs. It was or- 
ganized by the ConTention of Paris, in 1858, 

\\ ^\^ ^°if in accordance with Article XXVII. of the 
Danube Belt. 

Treaty of Paris in 1856, and was formed by 
the nnion of the principalities of Moldavia and "Wallachia 
with a part of Bessarabia wrested from Eussia by the Allied 
Powers in order to take from her control the mouths of the 
Danube. On the ground of this treaty and Convention, 
it claimed autonomy and had exercised it ; but the Turk 
asserted his sovereignty over it, and cited in proof the 
annual tribute paid to the Porte by Eoumania. The 
bitter discussion of the question by the Turk, within the 
five or six years preceding, showed that nothing but the 
lack of ability had prevented the maintenance of sove- 
reignty by military force. The composition of the Eou- 
manian population— 5,000,000, of which 275,000 are Jews 
and 29,000 were Eoman Catholics, 1,300 Mohammedans 
and 4,700,000 of the Greek Church — brings out clearly 
their antagonism to Turkey and their natural friendship for 
Eussia. It was manifestly in accordance with the fitness 
of things that in the war which Eussia was to prosecute 
the Eoumanian troops should constitute one of the bravest 
and most effective corps in the Eussian army. 

Below Eoumania, to the south of the Danube, in the 

region belting Turkey from Dalmatia and the Adriatic 

to the Black Sea was the country of the Slavs, 

2. The Slavic including Servia in the center, Bosnia in the 

west, and Bulgaria in the east. They belong 

to the Southern of the three great branches of Slavonian 

peoples, and were therefore of the same race with the Eus- 

sians and Poles, the representative Eastern and Western 

Slavs. To the same race belong the people of Montenegro. 

In the center of this belt, to the south and west of 
Eoumania, across the Danube, between Austria and the 
Balkans, lay the principality of Servia. Conquered in 
1835 by the Turks, it was speedily reduced to a condition 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TURKISH WAK. 119 

of miserable slavery. Forming the borderland across 
whicli tlie Turkish armies bore the banner of the Janizaries 
for centuries, in their long and bloody wars with Austria, 
its Christian people Avere subjected to those untold horrors 
to which were doubtless due, in great measure, their heroic 
efforts for freedom, unsuccessful under Czerny, or Black 
Grcorge, in 180G, but more successful under Milosch in 
1814. Since the Peace of Bucharest, in 1812, Servia had 
claimed partial independence, and her autonomy had been 
guaranteed by the Allied Powers, in 1858, by the Treaty of 
Paris ; but the Sultan held the right to maintain his gar- 
risons there, and exacted a tribute of 2,300,000 piastres, 
and on these grounds claimed sovereignty over the princi- 
pality. The composition of the population of 1,500,000 
— not more than 15,000 of whom were Turks, while the 
remainder were chiefly connected by race and religion with 
Eussia — had resulted in an intense sympathy with the 
Kussian and an inveterate antipathy to the Turk, which 
had much to do with bringing about the bloody war be- 
tween the two Empires. Nothing but the threatening 
attitude of the outside nations had prevented Servia — de- 
feated in its first encounter — from earlier taking its place 
on the side of the Eussians and Eoumanians against the 
common foe. 

To the westward of Servia lay Bosnia, shut in on the north 
and west by Austria, on the south by Albania, and traversed 
by the Dinaric Al]os. Of the -more than 1,200,000 in- 
habitants of its two provinces, Bosnia proper and Herze- 
govina, over 400,000 were Mohammedans in religion, but 
chiefly descendants of the Slavonic converts to Moham- 
medanism at the time of the conquest ; so that while 
they were fanatical Mussuilmans, they were nevertheless 
very hostile to the Porte. The men of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina were the original insurgents in the rising in the 
seventies against the Turkish rule in Europe. The 
slavery which had lasted without mitigation for three 



120 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

centuries and a half at last became unendurable, and in 
the summer of 1875 the revolt in Herzegovina began. For 
a time it attracted but little attention, although a few dis- 
cerning minds perceived, as Mr. Freeman, the distinguished 
English historian, writes, " that now, at least, the enslaved 
nations had made up their minds to win their freedom or 
perish." The heroic struggle had continued for a year 
and a half before hope dawned on these brave mount- 
aineers ; both the story of their heroism under Despoto- 
vich and of the Turkish atrocities in butchering, impaling 
and torturing, being kept to a large extent from the out- 
side world. 

To the eastward of Servia, along the Black Sea, between 
the Danube and the Balkans, lay Bulgaria, the eastern 
extremity of the Slavic belt of Turkey. The Christian 
population, chiefly Bulgarian, numbered about 1,600,000 ; 
the Mohammedans, consisting of Osmanli Turks, Tartars, 
Circassians and Albanians, numbering in all perhaps 
700,000. Until 1872, the Christians of this province had 
been under the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, but 
were then placed, by an edict of the Turkish Government, 
under an independent Patriarch of their own. This had 
been done in accordance with their own wishes, but it 
brought down upon them the excommunication of the 
Patriarch of Constantinople. In this crisis, the Greek 
Church of Russia had interfered in their behalf, alien- 
ating in some degree the Patriarch of Constantinople, but 
attaching the Bulgarians firmly to itself. In sympathy 
with the Bosnians and Herzegovinans, the Bulgarians had 
been driven to insurrection by the terrible cruelties of the 
Turkish rule. The Turk had attempted the suppression 
of the insurrection, and hence the "Bulgarian atrocities" 
— the inhuman massacre, according to Mr. Schuyler, of 
15,000 men, women and children. The obscure affairs of 
Bosnia and Herzegovina had failed to attract much atten- 
tion in the outside world. Little was known of them. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TURKISH WAE. 121 

but the Turk had come at length to do his work in Bul- 
garia, where it could become known to the world. It 
was tliis that had roused the righteous indignation of 
Christendom in behalf of the enslaved Christians of 
Turkey, and that finally brought the hosts of Eussia to 
the rescue. 

To the southward of Bosnia, between it and Albania, lay 
little Montenegro, or the Black Mountain, in the heart of 
the Turkish dominions, though never a part of them. 
This Slavic principality, then of less than 2,000 square 
miles, and less than 200,000 inhabitants — the seed of free- 
dom planted in the mountains to keep alive its kind 
until God's day of deliverance should come to the Slavic 
belt of Turkey — had maintained its independence from the 
beginning against the power of the Ottoman Empire, 
although Midhat Pasha is represented in the Lonclo7i Times 
as speaking of it as a part of " his country." It was 
doubtless the freedom of these unconquerable and im- 
placable foes of the Turk that had inspired the Herze- 
govinans to seek like freedom. That the Hospodar was a 
firm ally of Eussia, receiving from the Czar an annual pen- 
sion of 9,000 ducats, had led to the tremendous effort 
that had Just been made by the Sultan to annihilate these 
men of the Black Mountain, and to the heroic part which 
they had played, and were later to play in the Eusso-Turk- 
ish conflict. 

It will be seen at once that the Slavic peoples of Turkey 
were those most immediately engaged in insurrection 
against the Turk. They were struggling to escape from 
his despotic yoke. 

South of the Slavic Belt was what may be called the 
Hellenic belt, extending from the Adriatic to 
the ^gean, including Salonica in the center, ^' "^ggi^^^^^ 
Albania on the west, and Constantinople, or 
Eonmelia, on the East. The Hellenic peoples predomi- 
nated in this portion of Turkey. 



122 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

On the West^ bordering on tlie Adriatic and Ionian seas, 
between Bosnia on tlie north and free Greece on the south, 
lay Albania, the ancient Epirus. Its inhabitants, probably- 
descended from the ancient Illyrians and Epirotes, belong 
to the Hellenic race as distinguished from the Slavic, and 
had been exposed more helplessly to Turkish despotism 
and barbarity than any of the Turkish provinces thus far 
mentioned. In sympathy with Eussia in religion, they 
hated the Turk with perfect hatred. Notwithstanding the 
difference in race between the Slav and the Hellene, they 
Avere only restrained from joining in the war against the 
Turk by their horror of Turkish revenge, the helplessness 
of their position, and the unrighteous interference of the 
outside nations — notably of Great Britain — against them, 
and in favor of the Turk. 

To the eastward of Albania lay Salonica, the ancient 
Macedon, having then a population of between 1,000,000 
and 2,000,000, belonging chiefly to the Hellenic and Slavic 
races. To the eastward of Salonica was the ancient Thrace, 
in which was chiefly situated the larger ancient metro- 
politan province of Roumelia, in which was Constantinople 
itself. The inhabitants were largely of Hellenic, Slavic 
and Armenian descent. 

To the southward of the Hellenic belt are Crete and 
the islands of the ^gean, also essentially Hellenic in their 
population. In all southern Turkey the Greeks, Slavs and 
Armenians constituted the masses of the people, and the 
Greek Church was the chief religion ; so that this entire 
belt was in sympathy with the Greek and Eussian, rather 
than with the Turk. Even in the city of Constantinople, 
the very center of the Ottoman rule, one half of the in- 
habitants were Greek Christians and orthodox Armenians. 

It is in precisely these lands that the hand of the op- 
pressor had been most constant and heavy, and repeated 
instances of Turkish barbarity — as in the massacre in Scio, 
in the time of the Greek struggle for independence, when 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND IIUSSO-TUKKISH WAE. 123 

70,000 out of a total of 100,000 were butchered or sold into 
slavery — had developed au intense hatred of everything 
Turkish. 

The three chief races in this Hellenic belt were the Turks, 
Armenians and Greeks. In it were found considerably over 
1,000,000 out of the 1,500,000 or more Turks in European 
Turkey. The Armenians and Greeks, each quite as nu- 
merous, were seeking freedom from the Turk. The Arme- 
nians had presented their case in a Memoir, dated October, 
1876, and laid before each of the Great Powers of Europe. 
This action showed their relation to the Porte. The 
Hellenic peoples of Turkey, numbering almost as many 
as the Slavs, had also been moving in the interests of 
freedom so far as they had been able. Immense popular 
meetings had been held at Athens and other places in the 
interests of Hellenic freedom. At a meeting of 10,000 
Greeks at the Pnyx, at Athens, the Professor of History, 
in the University of Athens, said : " The Slavs have risen 
this year, the Greeks have not." Professor Papparrhigo- 
poulos gave the reason : 

" The Powers liave made use of every means to repress the dis- 
position of the Greeks to war, hy promising that the Greek nation, 
whicli for the time refrained from complicating the situation, should 
at the settlement obtain the same advantages as the Slavs." 

Equally, then, with the other three Christian races, the 
Hellenic peoples of European Turkey were against the 
Turk. 

We have thus, at the lowest figure, somewhere between 
12,000,000 and 15,000,000 of the inhabitants of European 
Turkey who were either by birth or by relation, or by 
both, as well as by hatred of slavery, the enemies of the 
2,000,000 Turks who were to be found in Southeastern 
Europe, and who were therefore but a handful as com- 
pared with the Christian races. This hasty 
survey makes it evident that the 7/2r then ^I^- ^eeman's 
being begun was not, in the ordinary sense. 



124 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

a " war between Enssia and Tnrkey." This was very 
forcibly put by Mr. Freeman : ^ 

"Seven years ago, we spoke with perfect accuracy of a war between 
Germany and France ; so we are now tempted to speak of a war 
between Russia and Turkey. But there is in truth no war between 
Russia and Turkey. The war is waged by Russia and European 
Turkey against the Turks. By France we mean a certain part of 
the earth's surface and its inhabitants. When France and Germany 
were at war, every inhabitant of France was on the French side, 
every inhabitant of Germany was on the German side. There was 
no fear of any Frenchman lielping the Germans or of any German 
helping the French. The war was really, a war between two nations. 
. . . But he would be grievously mistaken who should think that 
there is now any war between Russia and Turkey in this sense. If 
by Turkey we mean the land and nations which are under the Turkish 
power, such as Bulgaria, Roumania, and the still enslaved parts of 
Greece, those lands and their inhabitants are not at war with Rus- 
sia. They welcome Russian aid to free their country from the 
Turkish intruder. Those who have read the account of the entrance 
of the deliverer into Tirnova will hardly believe that the people of 
Turkey look on the Russians as enemies." 

It will also be observed that the Christian inhabitants 
of European Turkey had risen against the Turk wherever 
insurrection had been possible, and that the Mohammedans 
who were native to the soil, as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
were passively hostile to the Turk. The struggle may 
therefore be described as one between Eussia and the non- 
Turkish peoples of European Turkey on the one hand, 
and the Turk on the other. It was, as Professor Groldwin 
Smith regarded it, a war of races, of political and social 
principles, rather than of religions. 

III. The Eussiak Intervention and the Eesults 
~ OP the War. 

The time came at length when the Czar Alexander II. 

1 Contemporary Review, The English People and the War, August, 
1877, p. 483. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND EXJSSO-TTJKKISH WAE. 125 

was forced to interfere in behalf of the Christians in 

Turkey. There had been three questions 

lonff under discussion, that had now been ^^^^i^Ji'ia'iT 
° . ' Questions, 

practically settled : 

1st. Will Europe, acting under the Treaty of Paris, do 

anything for these oppressed millions ? 

2d. Can Kussia be trusted or permitted to do anything ? 

3d. Will the Czar have the support of his people ? 

(I.) The Way for iNTERVENTioisr OpEisrED, 

It was settled that Europe would do nothing, but that 
she could no longer hinder Russia. Heretofore the diplo- 
matists of Europe had always successfully 
stood in the way of any just solution to the 
Eastern Question. But Providence seemed now to have 
almost taken it out of the hands of the wise men of 
Europe, and especially of these wise men of " Commercial 
England,^' by three great movements : the first more 
strictly providential, the second diplomatic, the third 
moral. 

The last twenty-five years had revolutionized Europe 
and destroyed the old Balance of Power for which the 
rulers had fought so long and fiercely. At 
the time of the Crimean War, there were five Providential 
Great Powers : France, Great Britain, Austria, 
Russia and Prussia, — France clearly heading the list. 
That war apparently reduced Great Britain to a secondary 
place. The weakness of her military became so patent to 
the world that the historian Green writes, that the great 
Indian mutiny of 1857 followed partly as a result.^ She 
had since been well-nigh helpless, a looker-on in the 
struggles that had shaken the Old World and the New. 
Austria and France had gone down before Prussia ; and 
Germany and Russia, twenty-five years before at the foot 
of the roll, now stood alone in Europe as Great Powers. 
1 Green, History of the English People, pp. 501-2. 



126 THE CEIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

In the struggle of Prussia, the Czar had shown himself a 
fast friend of the Emperor, and Providence had thereby 
bound the Emperor to the Czar in the crisis now upon 
Europe. These two men, incomparably the two greatest 
and best crowned heads of their times, were in a position 
to lay down the law to Europe on the Eastern Question. 
Austria, Great Britain and France, the three Powers next 
to Eussia most interested in the Eastern Question — the 
first through its Slavic population in Hungary, the second 
by its possessions in India, and the third through the Suez 
Canal and the old ambitious projects connected with it — 
had thus found it practically necessary in case a war was 
begun to stand aside. Providence had thus crippled the 
opposers of Southeastern freedom. 

The second or diplomatic movement had been equally 
remarkable, especially in the results upon the British Gov- 
ernment, the Power chiefly interested and the 
Diplomatic pgrpetual marplot in the Eastern game. It is 
not the present purpose to descend into the 
sink of European diplomacy and attempt the understand- 
ing of the schemes of the wise ones who had confounded 
themselves by their own wisdom. The great motives and 
movements stood out clearly, in spite of the skill of the 
diplomats. It had long been the favorite theory in London 
that '^British interests" required a weak and unaggressive 
power in Stamboul, and the authorities had therefore always 
done their utmost to sustain the Porte. For that end, the 
territory of Greece was limited. For that, the Crimean 
War was undertaken — contrary to the advice of Prince 
Albert — and in righting a little wrong a very great one was 
done to Eussia and the suffering Christians in Turkey, 
and the way paved for the decline of British influence in 
Europe. For that, the butcheries in Crete were sustained 
and morally shared in. As the result of a long course of 
such conduct, it was natural that when the threatening 
cloud of war appeared in the Orient, the British Govern- 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND BUSSO-TUEKISH WAR. 12T 

ment sliould have had more influence than any other Avith 
the Turk. It might have used that influence in behalf of 
the Christians, and was bound by every proper consider- 
ation, international and moral, to do so. It had been in- 
vited by Russia and the other Powers to do its duty. The 
diplomatists at the head of the government had deliberately 
set to work to prevent interference in Turkey, knowing 
that it must inevitably weaken and ultimately overthrow 
the rule of the Porte. It was by the influence of the British 
Minister that the Ilatt-i-Humayoun was left out of the 
Treaty of Paris and only put into the Protocol, so that 
Turkey, in violating it, need not violate the terms of the 
Treaty. In the trial of the Hatt experiment before the 
bar of Europe, already sketched, the British Ministers 
claimed the credit of having defeated the efforts of the 
Christian Powers and '' saved " Turkey. The rejection 
of the Berlin Memorandum had really been the decisive 
act, fortifying the Turk against all subsequent pressure. 
The one government, that before all others in Europe 
should have been the prompt protector of the Christians, 
made its boast of having proved their criminal betrayer. 
But the one thing that these astute politicians counted 
certain not to happen had happened. Eussia had taken 
up the cause of the oppressed alone ; and they had found, 
when too late for remedy, that they had brought about 
that which they most of all dreaded. It was the hand of 
God bringing to naught the counsels of the wise and 
bringing a little nearer the delivery of the oppressed. 

The third great movement had been a moral one. 
While the British Government was busy confounding itself 
with the question. How shall the Turk be 
sustained on the Bosporus and " British in- '^^^^'^ ^°^^- 
terests'^ be thereby conserved ? the question 
of humanity and justice had taken possession of the hearts 
of the great Christian leaders and masses. How shall we 
do right, and help on the emancipation of the je millions 



J 



128 THE CP.IME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

of enslaved Christians ? This last question had been 
asked all over Europe, and it bewildered the diplomatists 
everywhere. There were indications that it was this 
spontaneous movement that had decided the Christian 
Emperor of Germany in his sympathy and alliance with 
Eussia ; and that even against the far-seeing but un- 
scrupulous diplomatist. Prince Bismarck. But its influence 
was chiefly felt in the British Islands, where it brought 
about the grand moral conflict that, in spite of the sub- 
sequent reaction through Jingoism, did much — and prom- 
ises to do more — toward bringing the Eastern problem on 
the way toward its ultimate solution on the basis of right 
and humanity. In order to understand this critical con- 
flict, it is necessary to understand the dual character, 
motives and purposes of Great Britain, or rather of England, 
as already presented, since English sentiment controlled 
the kingdom. This conflict had shaken " Commercial 
England " to its center, and had shown all the world how 
mercenary and heathen and devilish it was in its spirit and 
aims and purposes, and had made it necessary for " Chris- 
tian England " sooner or later, if it would retain the name 
" Christian," to assert and maintain its right to control 
the government in the interests of Christ's kingdom and of 
humanity. 

Could Eussia be trusted and permitted to do for the 

Christians of Turkey what the other nations had refused to 

do ? This question had been widely asked 

Second Ques- ^^^ variously answered. Her enemies had 
tion. *' 

asked. Does not Eussia propose to play the 

oppressor in place of the Turk ? Her past record was 

appealed to, and the stories of ^'Eussian atrocities in 

Turkestan and Bulgaria had been told around the world, 

to prove that the change of masters would at best be that 

of one monster for another. The plain answer had been 

given that these stories had been fabricated, and that the 

Eussia 01 the day was not the Old Eussia but the New, 



THE SLAVIC CmSIS AND EIJSSO-TUBKISH WAR. 129 

Mr. Gladstone had shown that Mr. Schuyler's story of 
horrors, narrated in his first volume, was only *^ hearsay," 
contradicted by Mr. MacGahan, an eye-witness of the 
events professedly narrated, and by Mr. Schuyler himself 
in his second volume. Mr. Freeman had shown that the 
Bulgarian stories were manufactured by the Sublime Porte, 
and sent out to the world by its special agents with the 
help of British officials, to influence public opinion. The 
correspondent of the London Daily News, writing on the 
15th of July, had declared his conviction "that there had 
not been a single case in Bulgaria of personal maltreat- 
ment of a Turkish civilian by a Russian soldier." Germany 
liad fixed the indictment ujJon Turkey, and discriminated 
justly between the two nations, Avhen she demanded of the 
Porte that the prisoners taken in Bulgaria should be treated 
according to the laws of civilized warfare. There had 
doubtless been much of cruelty and brutality in the broad 
dominions of the Czar, but it had not been endorsed as 
such by the authorities, as it was in Turkey, nor had it 
been rewarded by decorating the perpetrators with honors. 
Besides, the tendencies to freedom and Christian civiliza- 
tion had been working most powerfully in elevating the 
Eussian nation above the deeds of barbarism and in- 
humanity. 

But had the Czar been sincere in his public statement 
of his motives in engaging in the war ? Authorities of 
the most varied sentiments all agree in as- 
cribing to Alexander the noblest character, -^lexander's 
Writing in 1866,' Mr." Duff said : ~- ^^' 

"After making every deduction, we still think that unless the 
policy of Alexander the Second very materially alters, he is likely to 
take a high place amongst the henef actors of mankind." \y 

Eecalling these words, he wrote in 18 7 7..: ^ 

" The figure of Alexander the Second will stand out as one of the 
most remarkable in contemporary history." 

1 Nineteenth Century^ vol. 1, p. 303. 
9 



J 



130 THE CRIME OP CHEISTENDOM. 

Professor Goldwin Smith, writing of him in his relation 
to the then pending struggle, added his most emphatic 
endorsement : ^ 

"There is not a statesman in Europe "wliom, on the whole, and 
having due regard to the exigencies of his position, rational liberals 
may more justly claim as their own, or whose career they can regard 
with more satisfaction, than Alexander II. He has not only done 
much, but he has risked much for humanity ; he has risked every- 
thing which vulgar and selfish despots prize, and to which vulgar 
and selfish despots cling. Almost alone in his calamitous imbroglio, 
he has behaved like a man of honor. There was not the slightest 
reason for doubting the sincerity of the assurances of moderation 
which he gave the English Government, and the treatment which 
those assurances received from the English minister was in perfect 
accordance with the whole of that minister's public life." 

In the same vein wrote Mr. Freeman and the Duke of 
Argyll. If Alexander the Liberator could not he trusted, 
there was not a sovereign in Europe that could be. " If 
any prince ever strove to avoid war, he had done so." He 
had evidently no thought of war at the outset ; but when 
Europe deserted the Christians of Turkey, the spontane- 
ous uprising of the Eussian people rendered it impos- 
sible for him to avoid it. His course had been entirely 
in accordance with his public professions. Moreover, he 
now proposed to engage in a great work for right and 
humanity, at immense hazard and cost, — a work which, 
by the clear principles of international law, he was 
solemnly bound to do — and which Christian Europe had 
left him to do alone, although the duty was theirs as truly 
as his — and he had therefore a right to the sympathy of 
Christendom until he should show himself unworthy of it. 

The Sla,vic Kace and the Greek Church were solidly be- 
hind the Czar. There can b"e no doubt of the genuine- 
ness of the great Pan-Slavic movement of 

ir uues ion. ^^^^ time. It was the rehabiliment, or rather 
the inspiration, of a great race connected with its instinctive 
"^ Contemporary Revieiv, vol.30, p. 1069. 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 131 

assertion of its own racial and religious solidarity. Doubt- 
less much of the new impulse had come from the infusion 
of Bible truth that had preceded and followed the Crimean 
War. That had proved to be both light and life to the 
Church and the race. Perhaps there never was a more 
intense feeling of sympathy with brethren of the same 
race than that which took possession of the Slavs during 
the seventies. If Alexander had failed to move on to the 
rescue when the proper hour came, it is the opinion of 
historians and statesmen best qualified to judge that he 
would have done so at the jDeril of his life and his throne. 
It was a spontaneous uprising of the church and people, of 
which the Czar was merely the representative. 

(II.) The Eussiak Advance and Victory, and 
Beitish Jingoism. 

Eussia declared war against Turkey on April 24, 1877, 
and, on June 27, a Eussian army crossed the Danube and 
moved toward the Balkans, while another force invaded 
Asia Minor from the East. Eussia's progress seemed 
slow, and the English critics pronounced Kars and Plevna 
impregnable ; but Kars was taken by assault on jSTovember 
18, 1877, and Plevna surrendered on December 10. With 
the close of the year Eussian success was complete and the 
way was open_to ConstantinojDle. "^ 

The British Government, under the lead of Lord Bea- 
consfield, suddenly woke up and resolved to 
give the Sultan an energetic support. It ^"g-tio?^"" 
sent Mr. Layard to the Turkish capital to rep- 
resent England there. Says Mr. McCarthy : ^ 

" Mr. Layard was known to be a strong believer in Turkey; more 
Turkish in some respects tlian tlie Turks themselves. But he was 
a man of superabundant energy ; of what might be described as 
boisterous energy. The Ottoman Government could not but accept 
his appointment as a new and stronger proof that the English Gov- 

1 History of Our Own Times, vol, 4, pp. 381-3. 



132 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

ernment was determined to stand by tlieir friend ; but they ought 
to have accepted it, too, as evidence that the EngUsh Government 
were determined to use some pressure to make them amenable to 
reason. Unfortunately it would appear that the Sultan' s Government 
accepted Mr. Layard's appointment in the one sense only, and not 
in the other. Parliament was called together at least a fortnight be- 
fore the time usual during recent years. The speech from the throne 
announced that her Majesty could not conceal from herself that, 
should the hostilities between Russia and Turkey unfortunately be 
prolonged, ' some unexpected occurrence may render it incumbent on 
me to adopt measures of precaution.' This looked ominous to those 
who looked for peace, and it raised the spirits of the war party. 
There was a very large and a very noisy war party already in existence. 
It was particularly strong in London. The class whom Prince Bis- 
marck once called the ' gentlemen of the pavement ' were in its favor, 
at least in the metropolis almost to a gentleman of the pavement. 
The men of action got a nickname. Tliey were dubbed the Jingo 
party. The term applied as one of ridicule and reproach was adopted 
by chivalrous Jingoes as a name of pride. The Jingoes of London, 
like the beggars of Flanders, accepted the word of contumely as a title 
of honor. In order to avoid the possibility of any historical misun- 
derstanding or puzzlement hereafter about the meaning of Jingo, 
such as we have heard of concerning that of Whig and Tory, it is 
well to explain how the term came into existence. Some Tyrtseus of 
the tap-tub, some Korner of the music-halls, had composed a ballad 
which was sung at one of these caves of harmony every night amid 
the tumultuous applause of excited patriots. The refrain of this 
war song contained the spirit-stirring words, 

" ' "We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do. 
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too,' 

"Someone whose pulses this lyrical outburst of national pride 
failed to stir called the party of its enthusiasts the Jingoes. The 
writer of this book is under the impression that the invention of 
the name belongs to Mr. Jacob George Holyoake ; but he declines to 
pledge his historical reputation to the fact. The name was caught 
up at once, and the party were universally known as the Jingoes. 
The famous abjuration of the lady in the Yicar of Wakefield had 
proved to be too prophetical. She had sworn 'by the living Jingo;' 
and now indeed the Jingo was alive." 

The English Government ordered the Mediterranean 
fleet up to Constantinople. Eussia protested that if the 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND P.USSO-TUEKISH WAR. 133 

English fleet passed the Dardanelles^, a Russian army 
should occupy Constantinople. Lord Derby succeeded in 
arranging a compromise, by the terms of which the English 
troops were not to be disembarked, and the Russians 
were not to acfvanco to the city. 

Russia had already made with Turkey the famous Ar- 
mistice of San Stefano. In this she had apparently en- 
sured all that should have been hoped for by 
the Christians of the Turkish Empire. Its gaJsteflnf 
main features were such as ought to have com- 
mended it to all Christendom : 

1st. It secured for the peoples of the Christian Provinces 
almost complete independence of Turkey, — in the North 
Danube region, in the Slavic belt, and in the Hellenic belt 
down to Constantinople. 

2d. It arranged to create a new and greater Bulgarian 
State with a seaport on the ^gean Sea. 

3d. It provided for the protection of the Armenian Chris- 
tians in Asiatic as well as European Turkey. 

4th. It again left the responsibility of seeing that reforms 
were carried out and the Christians protected largely in the 
superintendency of Russia, thus doing away with the '' con- 
cert " of action among the Powers that could never agree, 
because of the perfidy of England, and that were therefore 
despised by the Turks and failed to secure any beneficial 
results. 

Lord Beaconsfield, in his old Semitic and Jesuitic man- 
ner, set himself to the task of overthrowing that Treaty. 
In the controversies that followed. Lord 
Derby, finding himself unable longer to play beaconsfield, 
the cat's-paw for Lord Beaconsfield, withdrew 
from the cabinet and Lord Salisbury was made Foreign 
Minister in his place. The last peace member of the 
cabinet thus disappeared from it. The Jingo policy was 
carried out with all energy. Lord Salisbury's first act was 
to annouiice that England would only enter a Congress of 



134 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

the Powers free to consider and reverse all the provisions 
of the Treaty of San Stefano. The Indian Government 
was ordered, by the Prime Minister without consulting 
Parliament, to send troops to Malta. " Commercial 
England '' now, as always, set about doing her best to 
continue the slavery and butchery of the Christians of the 
Orient. 

Eussia had always been open to fair and rational nego- 
tiation. She offered to submit the Treaty to the constder- 
ation of a congress ; but ^' argued that the 
2, Treaty of stipulations which merely concerned Turkey 
and herself were for Turkey and herself to 
settle between them." 

Prince Bismarck interposed at length, as peace-maker, 
and issued invitations for a Congress to assemble in Berlin, 
on June 13, 1878, to discuss the contents of the Treaty 
of San Stefano. To this Russia at last agreed. 

Lord Beaconsfield, instead of sending the Foreign Secre- 
tary, Lord Salisbury, to the Berlin Congress, announced in 
his theatrical way that he would himself attend the Con- 
gress, accompanied by Lord Salisbury, and conduct the 
negotiations for England. His journey thither was made 
a theatrical procession, as was also his return with the 
Jingo cry of " Peace with honor." Prince Bismarck pre- 
sided at the Congress, which discussed most of the ques- 
tions raised by the recent war. Greece appeared for a 
hearing, and was finally allowed to j)lead in her own cause. 
We quote the summary of the proceedings of 

Features of ^Y\q Congress and of the main features of the 
the Treaty. ^ . . 

resulting Treaty of Berlin, given by Mr. Mc- 
Carthy. He says : ^ 

"The Congress of Berlin had to deal with four or five great dis- 
tinct questions. 

" It had to deal with the condition of the provinces or states nom- 
inally under the suzerainty of Turkey. 

1 A History of Our Own Times, vol. 4, pp. 388-390, 



THE SLAVIC CRISIS AND KUSSO-TURKISH WAR. 135 

"It had then to deal with the populations of alien race and relig- 
ion actually under Turkey's dominion. 

" It had to take into its consideration the claims of the Greeks ; that 
is, of the kingdom of Greece for extended frontier, and of the Greek 
populations under Turkey for a different system of rule. 

"Finally, it had to deal with the Turkish possessions in Asia. 

" The great object of most of the statesmen who were concerned 
in the preparation of the Treaty which came of the Congress, was 
to open for the Christian populations of the southeast of Europe 
a way into gradual self-development and independence. But, on the 
other hand, it must be owned that the object of some of the powers, 
and especially, we are afraid, of the English Government, M'as rather 
to maintain the Ottoman Government than to care for the future of 
the Christian races. These two influences, acting and counteracting 
on each other, produced the Treaty of Berlin. 

" That treaty recognized the complete independence of Roumania, 
of Servia, and *of Montenegro, subject only to certain stipulations 
with regard to religious equality in each of these states. To 
Montenegro it gave a seaport and a slip of territory attaching to it. 
Thus one great object of the mountaineers was accomplished. They 
were able to reach the sea. 

" The treaty created, north of the Balkans, a state of Bulgaria ; a 
much smaller Bulgaria than that sketched in the Treaty of San Ste- 
fano. Bulgaria was to be a self-governing state, tributary to the 
Sultan and owning his suzerainty, but in other respects practically 
independent. It was to be governed by a prince whom the population 
were to elect, with the assent of the Great Powers and the confirma- 
tion of the Sultan. It was stipulated that no member of any reign- 
ing dynasty of the great European Powers should be eligible as a 
candidate. 

"South of the Balkans, the treaty created another and a different 
kind of state, under the name of Eastern Roumelia. That state was 
to remain under the direct political and military authority of the 
Sultan, but it was to have, as to its interior condition, a sort of ' ad- 
ministrative autonomy,' as the favorite diplomatic phrase then was. 
East Roumelia was to be ruled by a Christian governor, and there 
was a stipulation that the Sultan should not employ any irregular 
troops, such as the Circassians and the Bashi-Bazouks, in the gar- 
risons of the frontier. The European powers were to arrange in 
concert with the Porte for the organization of this new state. 

"As regarded Greece, it was arranged that the Sultan and the 
King of the Hellenes were to come to some understanding for a modi- 
jficatipn of the Greek frontier, and that if they could not arrange this 



136 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

between themselves, the Great Powers were to have the right of offer- 
ing, that is to say, in plain words, of insisting on, their media- 
tion. 

"The Sultan also undertook scrupulously to apply to Crete the 
organic law of 1868. Bosnia and Herzegovina were to be occupied 
and adminstered by Austria. Eoumania undertook, or in other 
words was compelled to undertake, to return to Kussia that portion 
of Bessarabian territory which had been detached from Russia by the 
Treaty of Paris. Roumania was to receive in compensation some 
islands forming the Delta of the Danube, and a portion of the 
Dobrudscha. As regarded Asia, the Porte was to cede to Russia 
Ardahan, Kars, and Batum, with its great port on the Black 
Sea." 

On the wliole it is a marvel that;, what with Beaconsfield 
theatricals and British Jingoism, more was not done in the 
Congress of Berlin toward reriianding the 
^b'^^'p M^^* Christians to the Turkish slavery and oppres- 
sion from which Enssia had for the moment 
delivered them at the cost of so much blood. But the 
marplots did enough in this direction to earn for them the 
execration of all Christendom for all ages to come. The 
erection of a smaller Bulgaria north of the Balkans^instead 
of the Grreater Bulgaria proposed by the Treaty of San 
Stefano, left the present Bulgaria well-nigh helpless, and 
remanded the part south of the Balkans to the somewhat 
modified tender mercies of the Turk. Macedonia, in fact 
the whole of the great Hellenic belt, was left as an integral 
part of Turkey, to be helped somewhat in their condition 
of slavery, by a Commission which never fulfilled its task, 
but disbanded after performing its work for the upper 
provinces. A way was thus prepared for a Macedonian 
crisis in the near future. The clause of the Treaty that 
provided for the freedom of the Armenians in Asia was 
thrown out, and one inserted in its place that restored 
them to slavery again and has resulted in the recent 
Armenian horrors and the present Armenian Ques- 
tion. 

Bussia apparently secured all that British diplomacy 



THE RLAVTC CRISIS AND RUSSO-TtJRKISH WAR. 137 

would allow for the Christians in Turkey. In the line 
of her own ambitions she secured all that she 
desired, and as afterward transpired secured _ ^"^^^^*°^^ 
it hy British treachery. Mr. McCarthy 
shows ^ that Lord Beaconsfield had entered into secret en- 
gagements both with Eussia and with Turkey. He states 
that the secret treaty with Russia was signed at the For- 
eign Office on May 30, some days before Prince Bismarck 
issued his invitation to the Congress ; that it was a memo- 
randum determining the points on which an understanding 
had been come to between Russia and Great Britain, and 
a mutual engagement for the English and Russian pleni- 
potentiaries at the Congress ; that it bound England to put 
up with the handing back of Bessarabia and the cession 
of the port of Batum ; that it conceded all the points in 
advance which the English people believed that their pleni- 
23otentiaries had been making brave struggle for at Berlin ; 
that Lord Beaconsfield had not then frightened Russia 
into accepting the Congress on his terms ; that the call 
of the Indian troops to Malta had not done the business, 
nor had the reserves, nor the vote of the six millions ; that 
Russia had gone into the Congress because Lord Salisbury 
had made a secret engagement with her that she should 
have what she specially wanted ; that the Congress was 
only a piece of pompous and empty ceremonial. 

Concerning the secret engagement entered into with 
Turkey, he says that the English Government undertook 
to guarantee to Turkey her Asiatic possessions against all 
invasion, on condition that Turkey handed over to England 
the island of Cy]3rus for her occupation ; that Lord Bea- 
consfield afterward explained that Cyprus was to be used 
as " a place of arms" — in other words, England had now 
formally pledged herself to defend and secure Turkey 
against all invasion or aggression, and occupied Cyprus 
in order to have a more effectual vantage-ground from 

1 History of our Own Times, vol. 4, pp. 392-4. 



138 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

wliicli to carry ont this project ; that the difference, there- 
fore, between the policy of the Conservative Government 
and the policy of the Liberals was now thrown into the 
strongest possible relief ; that Mr. Gladstone, and those 
who thought with him, had always made it a principle of 
their policy that England had no special and separate in- 
terest in maintaining the independence of Turkey ; that 
Lord Beaconsfield declared it to be the cardinal principle 
of his policy tliat England specially, England above all, 
was concerned to maintain the integrity and the independ- 
ence of the Turkish Empire — that, in fact, the security 
of Turkey was as much part of the duty of English states- 
manship as the security of the Channel Islands or of Malta. 
On the whole, it would appear that " Peace with Infamy " 
would have fitted Lord Beaconsfield's return from the Berlin 
Congress far better than " Peace with Honor." It is 
impossible to escape the conclusion that the 

Beaconsfield's Eastern Christians owe all that they have 
Legacy, , . -^ 

gained to Russia, and all their continued woes 

to Great Britain. The special legacy of Beaconsfield to 
the present generation — along with the moral responsi- 
bility for the deeds of evil perpetrated and the policy of 
ignominy perpetuated in the name of England — is the 
"^deadlock of diplomacy" that marks another stage in 
" The Crime of Christendom," and that has proved to be 
merely a new and more startling phase of the Eastern 
Question. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ARMENIANS iN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 

The cunning of Abd-ul-Hamid and the deft diplomatic 
skill of Lord Beaconsfield wrought together, in connection 
Avith the Treaty of Berlin, in bringing about the absolute 
subjection of the European Powers to the Sublime Porte 
in its work of butchery. England, through her Prime 
Minister, secured the remanding of the Christians of all 
Southern Turkey to the old slavery after they had been 
freed by Russia. England overturned the arrangement 
that Russia had made for securing, by her military police, 
reforms and freedom in Armenia. England having thrust 
out Russia pushed herself into place of responsibility for 
the Armenians, and then left them to the mercy of the 
Turk without lifting a finger to help them. England 
bound herself in secret Convention by the bribe of Cyprus 
to champion against the world the " integrity of the 
Ottoman Empire," and boldly announced that to be her 
controlling policy, and then under cover of her professions 
of friendship and promise of support stole away Egypt. 
Abd-ul-Hamid secured, mainly through the agency of 
England, in the Treaty of Berlin, the recognition by the 
Great Powers of Europe of his absolute right to freedom 
from all interference in the affairs of his Empire. And 
so England and the Sultan are chiefly responsible for the 
present '^ deadlock of diplomacy," otherwise known as the 
^'Concert of Europe." One can scarcely help imagining 

139 



140 THE CHIME OS' CHRISTENDOM. 

tlie sneer of the Jewish Mephistopheles at " Christian " 
England as he recounted his successes at the Congress of 
Berlin, — a sneer such as that with which his statue in 
Westminster Abbey recently tortured a Christian wor- 
shiper who became sensible of its presence. 

The Stages in the progress of " The Crime 

Tragedy ^ ^^ Christendom " toward the final denouement 
have been perfectly simple. 

First Act : The throttling of Greece, at the time of the 
G-reek Eevolution, in the interests of Turkey and the 
Balance of Power. 

Second Act : The wresting from Russia of her acknowl- 
edged treaty-right to protect the Christians of the Otto- 
man Empire, and the elevation of that Empire to the 
place of one of the Powers in Europe, thereby giving it 
a free hand in dealing with its Christian subjects. 

Third Act : The binding of Christian Europe hand and 
foot with fetters of an iniquitous diplomacy, thereby let- 
ting loose the Sultan in his work of exterminating the 
Christians under his rule. This Third Act already em- 
braces two successive Scenes, and moves toward still larger 
possibilities : 

First Scene : The Turk let loose and engaged in exter- 
minating the Armenians, while the imbecile Powers palaver 
and do nothing ! 

Second Scene : The Turk let loose upon his Greek and 
other Christian subjects over the Empire, and the deepest 
depths of the Crime of Christendom reached in the spec- 
tacle of Christian Europe protecting the Great Assassin 
against the Christians he is butchering ! 

These Two Scenes in that Act of the drama with which 
the Nineteenth Century is closing remain to be considered, 
— the one as the first-fruits of Beaconsfield's policy, the 
other as its consummation in the completed Crime of 
Christendom. 

The Armenian Massacres of 1894 and 1895 and 1896 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 141 

were the first-fruits of " Lord Beaconsfield's legacy " to 

''Commercial England" in his Jingo policy 

and " Peace with honor," and the harbinger "in^^^e AcT^ 

of the more terrible harvests of death that 

must inevitably follow the "deadlock of diplomacy" now 

existing as the result of official England's cupidity and 

perfidy, unless Christendom shall rise in moral indignation 

and break it, or Providence in some unexpected way shall 

shatter it. 

Tiie Armenian Question — as a phase of the Eastern Ques- 
tion — is a complex and complicated one. Its complications 

have arisen from the origin, characteristics, 

, 1 1 • i j> 4.1 1 J? The Armenian 

environment and history oi the race, and irom crisis 

the futilities and iniquities of European and 

especially English diplomacy that have been considered. 

In order to understand the present Armenian Crisis it is 

manifestly necessary to understand, first of all, the Eastern 

Question in general, of which it is merely a special phase 

and outcome. Hence the discussion already entered into, 

of the earlier and successive phases of that Question. But 

it is quite as necessary to understand — 

1st. The Armenians themselves in their history, religion 
and peculiar situation. 

2d. The Armenian massacres of the past three years 
with their aims, organization and execution. 

I. The Armenians Themselves. 

The origin, character and history of the Armenians arfe 
matters of much general interest, even apart from their 
bearing upon the present discussion, but in that bearing of 
intense and peculiar interest. Their Christian history and 
faith are of prime importance, as these furnish the only 
key to their continued existence and prominence in spite 
of all the centuries of adversity, slavery and butchery. 

The Armenians are physically one of the finest types of 
the Indo-European race. Whoever has looked upon the 



142 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

picture or tlie face of the present Catliolicos of Etch- 
miadzin, the religious head of the Armenian Church, has 
remarked the wonderful physical beauty and dignity of this 
representative man. Those who have familiarized them- 
selves with the life and history of this Catliolicos are quick 
to commend his lofty character and aims. The race he 
so well rei^resents claim to be descendants of Haikh, a son 
of Togarmah, the grandson of Japheth, who fled from 
the tyranny of Belus of Assyria and settled in the country 
which we call Armenia. In their own language that 
country is still Haik, or Haikh, and the people Haiks or 
Haikans. Indeed the Turk has placed his ban upon the 
name Armenia, not permitting its use in his dominion, but 
seeking to substitute for it that of Kurdistan ; his one aim 
seeming to be to blot out alike the race, name and religion. 
This unique Christian people and equally unique Church, 
both in their original home and as scattered abroad among 

the nations, have held peculiar relations to 
and History, ^^e rest of Christendom and to Islam. Next 

to their Christianity, their environment may 
be regarded as furnishing a key to their past and present 
position and relations. Where they have been and where 
they are have had much to do with deciding what they 
have been, what they are, and what they have suffered. 
The record of the scattering abroad of the descendants 
of Noah after the Deluge has been shown by Rawlinson 

to possess absolute and easily verifiable histor- 
eir rigm. ^^^j accuracy. From this record the sons of 
Japheth appear, on the one hand, to have occupied 
Armenia, the Caucasus and Asia Minor, the children of 
Gomer reaching out around the Black Sea and leaving their 
mark in Crimea and all across Europe in the Cimmerii (or 
Gomerians) and the Cymry, and the children of Javan 
pressing across into Greece and southern Europe in gen- 
eral ; and, on the other hand, spreading over the northern 
parts of Asia and India, and possibly into America. 



THE AEMENIANS IN THE EASTERN" QUESTION. 143 

The Haiks or Haikan — called by foreigners Armenians, 
from the great conqueror, King Aram, a descendant of 
Togarmah, one of the sons of Gomer — retained their old 
home in what was the birthplace of all the races, the great 
plateau of Armenia, — being apparently a choice race among 
the original races. 

Armenia may be regarded roughly as covering 100,000 
square miles more or less ; although the application of 
the name has varied greatly in the course of 
history. The Armenian plateau, elevated a The Great 

■ -tint Jrl3'uG3/ll, 

mde or more above the level of the sea, centers 
in Mt. Ararat, Avhich rises to the height of 16,930 ft. The 
Plateau is broken through near the center by a great de- 
pression running east and west along the Araxes Eiver. 
It breaks down in various directions toward the lower 
levels : to the north and west, by terrace lands, sloping 
with the Anti-Taurus range toward the Black Sea at 
Trebizond, and with the Bimbogia Dagh and the Alma 
Dagh toward the Mediterranean at Bayas and the mouth 
of the Orontes, — and paralleling the coasts ; to the north- 
east, by a terrace land toward Tiflis, and paralleling the 
Russian Railway from Batum on the Black Sea to Baku on 
the Caspian ; to the south, by the Taurus range toward 
the upper courses of the Euphrates and Tigris. On this 
highland, bridging the way between the four great seas 
(Black, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, Caspian), by which 
all the commerce of the Old World has in all ages had its 
outlets. Providence placed the Armenian race, and for 
forty centuries it has held its place there as the advance 
guard of Western Aryan civilization.^ 

Across this Plateau the caravans bearing '''the wealth 
of Indus and of Orm^^ have passed, and at the foot of its 
slopes or within easy reach of them were built Palmyra 
and Baalbek and Babylon and Bagdad and all the great 
trade-cities of Western Asia. It has also been the outlet 
1 See Map of the Armenian Plateau. 



144 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

from age to age through and across which the countless 
hordes of migrating barbarians have found their way from 
that cradle of the race^ the arid plains of Central Asia^ to 
new and better homes, — now surging in vast masses as 
Groths or Scythians or Slavs or Tartars, now following great 
leaders such as G-enghis Khan and Timur. 

This same Plateau has naturally been regarded in past 
ages as the key to universal empire, and so has been the 
crossing- place and the meeting-place of the armies of the 
great nations in their strife for the empire of the world. 
Especially has it been the battle-ground between the West 
as representing the ideas and forces of freedom and the 
East as dominated by the ideas and forces of despotism. 

Naturally, having been placed in such a position, "as 
an advance-guard to Western civilization on the bridge 
which leads through Asia to the West," the most varied 
fortune — ought we not to say, misfortune ? — has fallen to 
the lot of Armenians. Says one of their historians in the 
tenth century, in concluding his work : 

"We are like a wheat-field reaped by bad husbandmen ; it is sur- 
rounded on all sides by clouds and thick mist. I cannot foresee 
what will happen to us in the future. We shall bow to the decrees of 
Providence." 

The j)eriods of Armenian freedom and nationality have 

naturally been alternated with periods of subjection to 

foreign rule, the regaining and maintenance 

tudes. 0^ their liberties and nationality gradually 

becoming more difficult, if not impossible. 

Under the Haikian dynasty the national capital for many 

centuries was at Armavir, to the north of the Araxes, but 

toward the first century it was changed to Artaxata (Ar- 

dasbad). 

As far back as 538 B. C, Tigranes I. appears as the ally 
of Cyrus the Great in the overthrow of Babylon, thus pre- 
paring for the release of the Jews after the seventy years 
of captivity. Twenty-four years later, according to Herod- 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 145 

otus, Darius absorbed Armenia in his empire and ex- 
acted from the Armenians a tribute of four hundred 
talents. 

About 500 B. C. began the great military duel between 
the East and the AVest, — first between Greek and Persian^ 
— that continued for a thousand years, or till the fall of 
the Western Empire. It originated in a revolt among the 
Asiatic Greeks, against Darius the Great, in which Athens 
and Eretria assisted the rebels with troops. Across Ar- 
menia passed the successive expeditions to carry out the 
purpose formed by Darius to invade Greece : the first under 
Mardonius, to be scattered at sea by storms and on land by 
the wild tribes of Thrace ; the second under Datis and 
Artaphernes, to suffer a crushing defeat at Marathon (490 
B. 0.) ; the third under Xerxes I., with an army of a million 
men and a vast fleet, to win a victory at Thermopylae (480 
B. C), and to suffer crushing defeats at Salamis (480 B. C), 
and at Platsea (479 B. C), — Europe being thus saved from 
the blight of Oriental despotism, and the independence 
of the Asiatic Greeks being acknowledged fifty years after 
the revolt. 

Greece did not forget the invasion of the Persians. One 
hundred years after the revolt of the Asiatic Greeks, 
Proxenus, the friend of Xenophon, led up his 
ten thousand Greeks to aid Cyrus in his at- . "^^! „ 
tempt to win the Persian throne which was 
his birthright from his brother, Darius II., to whom it had 
been given. In " The Anabasis " Xenophon gives a fas- 
cinating account of this expedition, and of his own task, 
after the battle of Cunaxa, in leading back the Ten Thou- 
sand across Armenia to the Black Sea (401, 400 B. 0.) 
at Trapezus (now Trebizond). The Ancient Armenians 
and Kurds, as Xenophon describes them, have their almost 
exact counterparts in the same races of to-day. 

Three quarters of a century later Alexander of Mace- 
don swept over Armenia in his conc^uest of Persia and 

10 



146 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

it became subject to the Greek sway, passing at Alex« 
aiider^s death under control of the Seleucidse. 

At the opening of the second century B. C, when Scipio 
defeated Antiochus the Great (190 B. C), Artaxias led 
Armenia in a successful revolt. Forty years later Mithra- 
dates I., the Great, Parthian king, the sixth Arsacid, placed 
his brother Yalarsaces on the throne of Armenia, and the 
Arsacid dynasty thus established held the throne of Arme- 
nia until Artabanus the last of the Parthian Arsacids 
(Arsaces XXIX.) was defeated and put to death by the 
Persian Sassanids 226 A. D., when the Armenian Arsa- 
cids also came to an end. 

In these almost four hundred years one Armenian mon- 
arch stands out prominently, Tigranes II., surnamed the 
Great (96-55 B. C.). He pushed his conquests to the Med- 
iterranean and Black Seas, but becoming involved in a war 
with Eome, he was defeated, first by Lucullus, who took 
and sacked his capital, Tigranocerta, and later by Pom- 
pey, to whom he paid a vast sum to be permitted to retain 
possession of Armenia proper, after giving up lesser Ar- 
menia and all his recent conquests. From that date for 
three centuries was, with the Armenians, according to 
Tacitus, a period of almost incessant war, either with 
Rome through hatred or with the Parthians through 
jealousy. 

When the Armenians embraced Christianity, 276 A. D., 

another element of discord was added, both the heathen 

Eoman and the Zoroastrian Persian hating the 

Christian (disciples of Christ ; and the strife thus became 
intensified, until in 390 A. D. Armenia was 
divided between the Persian Sassanids and the Eomans un- 
der Theodosius the Great. Soon it entered upon a new 
era in which religious persecution was added to political 
harrying. 

The Sassanid dynasty went down before the Saracens in 
the seventh century and xirmenia was divided between ih^ 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 147 

Greek Empire and the Saracens, and entered upon her 
long period of Moslem control, which has continued with 
a single interruption until the present time. That inter- 
ruption was from 859 A. J)., under the Pagratidae, who 
for a time restored something of the old glories. 

After the beginning of the Christian Era the capital of 
Armenia was established successively in various cities. 
Ardasbad was forsaken, after it had been the capital for a 
century, when Erovant II. (58-78 A. D.) "built Erovan- 
tasbad and Pakaran, and adorned them with the spoils of 
the earlier cities." From the second to the fourth century 
the royal residence was at Valarsabad, which no longer 
exists, and, under the Pagratid dynasty, the chief town 
was first Shiragavan and afterwards Ani, the remains of 
which still testify to its magnificence. 

In short, since the opening of the Christian Era the 
history of Armenia may be summed up in the statement 
that the country has been the scene of a long 

series of bloody contests between Eomans, Successive 

>'. ' Devastations. 

Persians, Byzantines, Greeks, Saracens, Tar- 
tars, Turks and Kurds. There have been, however, ex- 
ceptional periods even in so great general misfortune. 
Soon after the close of the twelfth century Genghis Khan 
overran the Plateau with his savage Mongolian hordes. 
A century later his successor Timur the Lame swept the 
Plateau with his Tartar hordes. In 1605, when Abbas I. 
of Persia, surnamed the Great, defeated the Turks in a great 
battle, and recovered the Persian provinces which they had 
occupied, he vented his wrath in a special manner on the 
Armenians, laying waste their whole country and forcibly 
transplanting about 40,000 of the people to Persia where 
they settled principally in Ispahan and in New Julfa, 
"as they fondly called the city which they founded." 
That may be regarded as the blotting out of Armenia as a 
nation. The Armenians are now widely scattered abroad 
over the world, and the Armenian Plateaii has been divided 



148 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

between Turkey^ Persia and Eussia, the three Empires cen- 
tering in Mount Ararat. 

II. The Armenian Church. 

The amazing fact to be taken to heart is, that, in the 
midst of such convulsions, harrowings, persecutions and 
butcheries, the Armenian Christians have made such a 
development and record in their church and civilization. 
There is only one fact more amazing, and that is that 
Christendom has looked calmly on for these three years, 
while the Turk has been crowning his long record of butch- 
eries by the greatest of them all, and that Christian Europe, 
and especially Christian England, have given him their 
moral and political support in his hideous task ! 

Their historical setting and fate have made the story 
of the Armenian Christians more fascinating than any 
possible romantic fiction. The Armenian Church is one 
of the oldest Eastern Christian Churches not in com- 
munion with the Grreek or Latin Churches. It even claims 
— on legendary grounds — pre-apostolic foundation, our 
Lord, as they say, having corresponded by letter Avith 
Akbar, prince of Ur or Orfa, Their tradition has it that 
the Apostle Thaddeus, accompanied by Bartholomew and 
Jude, preached the Gospel and founded a church in Ar- 
menia as early as 34 A. D. 

The historical founder of the Church of Armenia, as 

the church of the race, was, however, St. Gregory, called 

the "Illuminator,^' a prince of the reigning 

„ ^^^. family of the Arsacids, who, having been 
Founding. -^ ^-.^ . . . 

himself converted to Christianity, eagerly 

sought the conversion of his people. Persecution and 

condemnation to death followed ; but King Tiridates, being 

miraculously cured, as he believed, of a dangerous malady 

by the saint, thereupon became a Christian, as did also 

many of his subjects, and sent Gregory to Caesare or Sis, 

where he wa§ consecrated firgt bishop of Armenia^ A, D, 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 149 

302. It is on this ground that the Armenian Church has 
claimed to be the oldest of established Churches, its estab- 
lishment antedating Constantine's acknowledgment of 
Christianity as the religion of the Eoman Empire, by more 
than a score of years. 

G-regory's successors afterwards assumed the title of 
Patriarch, and later that of Catholicos. Under their rule 
the Church, in spite of the opposition of the heathen 
Armenians and of their Persian conquerors, succeeded in 
gaining a permanent hold on the hearts of the people. The 
Bible was translated in 400 A. D. into the Old Armenian 
— belonging to the Iranic class of the southern division of 
Indo-European or Aryan languages — which language, now 
dead, has been superseded by the modern Haikh 
dialects. 

The doctrines of the Armenian Church are in the main 

identical with those of the Greek Church. They accept 

the decisions of the first, second and third 

(Ecumenical Councils. Having been pre- ^ ^*? 

, -, -, r, ,- ^ f. Doctrines. 

vented by a nerce persecution from attending 

the fourth Council, that of Chalcedon, in 451 A. D. — 
which condemned Eutyches and his followers, the extreme 
opponents of Nestorius — they refused to accept its decis- 
ions, and in 491 A. D., the Patriarch in full synod 
formally annulled them, and this led to the separation of 
the Armenian Church from the Orthodox Greek Church. 
As a matter of fact, the Armenian Church holds the or- 
thodox faith on the questions raised by the Council of ■ 
Chalcedon, having been led to annul the decisions of that 
council by false reports concerning what had been done. 
"We draw from the Encyclopedia Britannica a brief account 
of the separation. ^ 

"However occasioned, the separation was gradual; Armenian 
bishops attended tlie 5tli, 6th and 7th oecumenical councils (2d of Con- 
stantinople, 553 , 3d of Constantinople, 680 ; 2d of Nicsea, YSS), and 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 2, p. 481. 



150' THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

the churcli acknowledges the decrees of these councils as binding. 
Cut off from the Eastern Church, the Armenian bishops became all 
tlie more closely identified with tlieir native country, and kept alive 
patriotic feeling in times of great national distress. In spite of many 
national calamities, foreign domination, internal dissensions, and even 
banishment, the Armenian Church preserved its character, doctrine 
and discipline until the middle of the fifteentli century, when great 
dissensions arose which resulted in a schism. These quarrels were 
occasioned by Jesuit missionaries, wlio endeavored to make the 
Armenians adopt the doctrine, liturgy, and ceremonies of the Eoman 
Church. They succeeded in prevailing upon a great number of the 
adherents of the Armenian Church to separate from the community 
and join tlie communion of Rome. The Catholic Armenians, as they 
are called, first became a separate community towards the end of the 
sixteenth century ; their existence has proved a source of great weak- 
ness to the orthodox church, and through their exertions the old 
persecutions were revived. This state of matters went on until the 
middle of the eighteenth century, when the patriarch sought and ob- 
tained the intervention of Peter the Great of Russia. Since then 
the Armenian Church has found slielter under the protection of 
Russia. There is a reformation now going on in the Armenian Church, 
and a Reformed Church has arisen, whicli seeks to ally itself with 
the Calvinist Churches of Europe and America." 

Of the doctrinal features, developed later, they reject 
the filioque doctrine added to the Nicene Creed by the 
Western Church, and deny the distinctive doctrines of 
that Church. 

The Catholicos, the head of the Armenian Church, 
resides at Etchmiadzin, near Erivan, the capital of Eussian 
Armenia, to which every Armenian is expected 
^ ^ ^^' to make a pilgrimage at least once in his life. 
Eour Patriarchs have their seats at Etchmiadzin, Con- 
stantinople, Jerusalem and Sis. Under these are the 
bishops, and the vartabad or doctor of theology frequently 
charged with episcopal functions. Under these are the 
clergy proper — divided into the black clergy, who are 
monks and who are alone eligible for the higher clerical 
offices, and the white clergy including the parish priests 
and lower clergy. They reject the Romish doctrine of 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTEEN QUESTION. 151 

celibacy, and loermit the clergy to marry before or- 
dination, though not after. The clergy of all ranks are 
supported entirely by the free-will offerings of the 
people. 

The Armenians are confessedly an intensely religious 
people. In no church have the people ever been called 
to stand severer tests. Successively they have won the 
martyr's crown from Persian and Mongolian and Kurd and 
Ottoman. The marvel is that they still exist and still 
hold fast the faith. 

Something of their steadfastness has doubtless been due 
to their Christian literature. Among the Armenians, as 
in the case of so many other races since the 
Christian era began, the translation of the ^ ^ ^^* "^^" 
Bible into the language of the people resulted in the 
production of an extensive literature that had a vast educa- 
tive and elevating influence upon both clergy and laity. 
Many great works were translated from the Syriac and the 
Greek. As a result many writings that have perished in 
the language in which they were originally written are 
still preserved in their Armenian translations. Such are 
some of the works of Philo, Faustus of Byzantium, Lerubna 
of Edessa, etc., and in particular the Chronicle of 
Eusebius. A long line of writers of note extends down 
to the present time, except a break in the sixth century 
when the Persian monarchs cut off all connection between 
the Armenians and the Greek centers of culture. 

In the eighteenth century a literary revival took place, 
since which " Armenian literature has acquired a develop- 
ment which is remarkable in the absence of national unity. 
Printing presses have been established in most of the cities 
where Armenians are numerous, the ancient writers have 
been published and studied, the vernacular literature has 
been enriched both by original productions and transla- 
tions, and magazines and newspapers have been established 
in many of the centers of Armenian activity." 



152 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

In 1830 a Protestant mission was established in Turkish 
Armenia by the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions, mainly for the purpose of lifting up and 
spiritualizing the Armenian Church, in which much has 
been accomplished. The Board has made many of the 
principal cities great centers of educational and missionary 
activity, and has doubtless incidentally intensified the 
Moslem hatred and fanaticism that have shown them- 
selves in the recent massacres, during which the mission 
stations at Marash and Kharput, including the schools and 
colleges, were burned. 

Assuredly a Christian people so ancient in lineage, so 
noble in character, and so worthy in achievement, deserves 
the consideration and sympathy, and, in this day of their 
extremity, the help and deliverance for which they appeal 
to the Christian world. 

III. The Pkesent Situatio^st and CoiTDiTioisr of the 

Armenians. 

The Armenians are now widely scattered abroad. They 
hold a place in the modern world of the Orient somewhat 
analagous to that of the Jews of the Dispersion in Western 
Asia from the Babylonian Captivity to the Advent. Their 
natural aptitudes have fitted them to become the traders 
and bankers, the men of business enterprise and energy, 
in their modern world, as the Jews Avere in their ancient 
world. Of a once numerous race only 4,000,000 now re- 
main. These have scattered away across Asia to the Malay- 
sian peninsula, where there is now a settlement of several 
thousands, across Europe into all great centers, and across 
the Atlantic, especially to our own country. Eoughly 
speaking, about 2,000,000 are subjects of the Sultan, 
1,500,000 of the Czar of Russia, and 200,000 of the Shah 
of Persia. The remainder are scattered here and there 
among the nations. It thus appears that the great Ar- 
menian Plateau is still the chief center of the race, and 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 153 

that their destinies are bound up with those of three 
Empires. Mt. Ararat is the central point at which the 
three Empires, Persia, Russia and Turkey, meet, and from 
which they stretch away across and beyond the Plateau to 
the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and to the Mediter- 
ranean and Black Seas. 

The Plateau rises to its maximum of 7,000 feet, to the 
north of Mush, toward Erzrum, dividing the Eastern 
from the Western Euphrates, and these from the upper 
Araxes, and forming the roof of the great threefold water- 
shed of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian 
Gulf. " You are here at the heart of the whole geographi- 
cal system, at the culminating point from which the waters 
gather to start on their long and strenuous journey to dif- 
ferent and distant seas.''' This is the center of the Turkish 
part of the Armenian Plateau. 

The condition of the Armenians in the other two em- 
pires has a bearing on their condition in Turkish Armenia, 
and will help to understand it. 

In Persia — where most of them live in the region beyond 
the Plateau — the comparatively small number of resident 
Armenians combines with other features, as of 
history and religion, to keep the race ignorant, ^•. ■^^^^if^.ns 
powerless and helpless. Most of them are 
probably descendants of the 40,000 violently transported 
from their old home and enslaved by Shah Abbas. The 
bitter hatred of Zoroastrianism and Islam to Christianity 
has always led to oppression and persecution of these scat- 
tered and enslaved people. They have no Persian Patri- 
archate, no centralizing and unifying influence or effective 
bond. Their resulting ignorance has done much, under 
stress of persecuting bigotry, to transform their religion 
into a superstition. The American Presbyterian Church, 
which has made Persia one of its mission centers, working 
out from Teheran and Tabriz, has accordingly found it a 
difficult task to reach the Armenians, although they have 



154 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

accomplished great good among the Nestorians in their 
work from Urumiah — near the great Lake of that name, 
which lies at the center of the Persian quarter of the 
Armenian Plateau — where a mission station was first estab- 
lished in 1835. 

That the Persians with whom the Armenians have to do 
are not the civilized and soft-mannered people that many, 
influenced by poetry and novels, imagine them to be, will 
appear from the martyr record of the Annual Eeport of the 
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions for 1895. During 
that year ^'two noblemen, one a converted Armenian, in 
circumstances of the most barbarous cruelty, sealed their 
testimony for Jesus with their blood. The first, Mirza 
Ibrahim, was brought to Christ two or three years since 
at Khoi, one of the out-stations, and immediately after 
his public baptism became the victim of bitter persecu- 
tion," ending in a death by violence and torture. ^'^The 
Converted Armenian was Baron Aghajan, a shop-keeper 
in Urumiah." He was seized on a groundless charge by 
a howling mob of dervishes, young mullahs, students 
and others, and most inhumanly beaten, " and finally, on 
refusing to pronounce the Kalema Shahadat or Moslem 
creed, he was instantly thrust through with daggers, a 
rope was tied around his neck, his body was dragged 
through the streets and then thrown into a filthy pond 
near the city gates." Even the American missionaries 
have not escaped personal violence, one of them having 
been brutally assaulted while asleep in her tent, which was 
pitched on the roof of a house, and another having been 
robbed and stripped, and threatened with instant death. 

This will serve to show that while the condition of the 
Armenians in Persia is almost infinitely superior to what it 
is in Turkey — where the butcheries number thousands at a 
time — it is yet not at all an enviable one, rather one for 
which Christendom should find some speedy and permanent 
relief. Perhaps it may also serve to show what Moham- 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 155 

medanism is when, if not at its best, it is far from being at 

its worst. 

The Armenians on the Eussian side of the Plateau and 

in the regions beyond are much more numerous than in 

Persia. The boundary of the Russian portion 

of the Plateau comes down to within fifty ^i Armenians 

■^ m Enssia. 
miles of Erzrum, the gateway to Asia Minor, 

takes in the Upper Araxes with its deep trough, which at 
Erivan, the capital of the province of that name, sinks to 
a level of only 2,500 feet above the sea, and thence from 
Mt. Ararat follows the course of the Lower Araxes till it 
reaches the terrace lands, where it stretches away to the 
south, taking in the valley of the Araxes and the Kur to 
the shores of the Caspian. , At the foot of the terrace lands 
by which the Plateau breaks down to the north flows the 
river Kur, from its sources a few miles from the Black Sea 
to its mouth in the Caspian a hundred miles below Baku, 
the great center of the Caspian oil trade. Along the valley 
of the Kur runs the railway from Batum to Baku, being at 
its highest elevation more than a mile below the height at- 
tained by the great Plateau. Beyond the Kur is the coun- 
try stretching north to the Caucasus range. All across 
this region — Plateau, terrace and river valley — to the 
mountains, constituting Transcaucasia, Russian Armeni- 
ans are scattered. 

According to Mr. H. F. B. Lynch, the total po23ulation 
of Transcaucasia is about 5,000,000 souls, of which about 
1,000,000 are Armenians. However, as Mr. Lynch re- 
marks,^ 

"The importance of the Armenian element must be measured, 
not by its numerical strength, but by the solidarity of the Armenian 
people as compared with the peoples among whom they live. In 
the Eussian provinces they are little divided by religious differences ; 

1 See Contemporary Review, June, July and September, 1894, for 
the able and comprehensive articles from which many of the facts 
here given are drawn. 



156 THE CEIME OP CHEISTENDOM. 

the Eoman Catholics are a mere handful among the solid ranks of 
the Gregorians, and the Gregorian Church is not only the symbol of 
national existence, but the stronghold of national hopes. Two other 
races in Transcaucasia exceed the Armenians in number : the 
Tatars with 1,139,000, and the different divisions of the Georgian 
family, who number over a million souls. But the bitter religious 
antipathies of Sunni and Shiah divide the Tatars, and the Georgians 
are in a period of transition from their old feudal system to a new 
and more settled social order, while the union of their Church with 
the Orthodox Church of Russia has deprived them of the natural 
rally-point for that community of sentiment which is based on a con- 
sciousness of race pride." 

Mr. Lyncli's statement concerning the Transcaucasian 
provinces outside of the Armenian Plateau gives his esti- 
mate of the numbers of Armenians : 

" The distribution of the Armenians in Transcaucasia outside the 
area which I am treating is as follows : In the Government of Eliza- 
betpol, which includes Karabagh, they number 258,000 ; but only in 
the governmental division of Shusha and Zangezxir, that is to say in 
the tract of country between the Araxes on the east and the south- 
eastern shore of Lake Sevanga on the west, do they constitute the 
numerically preponderating race, while in the other divisions, and in 
the whole government, they are largely outnumbered by the Tatars, 
who are nearly twice as numerous as they. The government of 
Tiflis contains nearly 212,000 Armenians, of which I have included 
99,000 in my estimate for the Plateau itself : the remainder are dis- 
tributed over the other divisions of the government, and in the town 
of Tiflis, where they attain the imposing number of 55,000 in a total 
population of 145,000. In the Government of Baku, out of a total 
Armenian population of 55,000 there are over 24,000 in the town of 
Baku itself, where they are engaged in commerce and in the oil 
works : they are also numerous in the town and district of Sheam- 
akha, which lies to the west of Baku. In the Government of Kutais 
they are only 16,000, and most of these reside in the towns." 

The Russian portion of the Plateau proper, taking in 
the governments of Kars and Erivan, and parts of that 
of Tiflis, and reaching the terrace to the north of the great 
central lake Sevanga, has an area of about 22,000 square 
miles. The population of this part of the original home 
of the Armenians is according to Mr. Lynch as follows : 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QtTESTION. 157 

Armenians 519,238 Georgians 31,102 

Tatars 306,310 Russians 28,844 

Kurds 68,864 Karapapachs 27,247 

Greeks 47,763 Others 19,357 



Turks 46,985 



1,095,710 
It will be seen by this that the Armenians are the pre- 
ponderating element in this region. The Tatar element, 
next in importance, is largely made up of settled people 
of industrious habits. 

Under the Eussian rule the Armenians have had what 
they have found neither in Persia nor in Turkey, protection 
of life and property and freedom of commerce 
and religion. As a result the population of pr^^^^^ftv 
the Russian provinces has been greatly aug- 
mented by immigration from Turkey. Says Mr. 
Lynch : 

" It is computed that not less than 10,000 families from the district 
of Erzrum followed the Eussian army out of Turkey in 1829, and I 
am informed that, during the past year (1894), 3,500 passports have 
been registered for emigrants from Turkey by the Russian Consulate 
in Erzrum. A constant stream flows across the border, which 
would be much longer were it not for the disabilities placed upon the 
Armenians in Turkey by the government, that prevent the most of 
them from emigrating." 

It is almost twenty years since the now Russian portion 
of what was then Turkish Armenia was turned over by 
the Treaty of Berlin to the Czar. Mr. Lynch thus records 
the changed conditions of the Armenians in the region : 

" An experienced traveller, who visited the Armenian provinces in 
1868, and passed through the more fertile regions of the country be- 
tween Kars and Kagisman, has left on record a striking picture of the 
misery of those times. He was crossing the district of Shuragel, the 
ancient Shirac of the Armenians, and he speaks of deserted towns 
and villages, of Armenian peasants who clung to their ruined homes 
with a pertinacity of affection which neither poverty nor oppression 
could subdue, of the dispossession of the Christians by the Turkish 
Beys, and of the exactions and forays of the Kurds, which had cur- 
tailed agriculture and stifled industry, and had reduced both to the 



158 THE CRIME OF CHEISTEKDOM. 

extreme limit on which human Ufe is able to subsist. If, at the present 
time, the Armenian peasant gathers for himself the crops which he 
has sown, and the restless Kurd consults his safety by a sober respect 
for the law, it is to Eussia that the people owe this deliverance from 
the license and anarchy of former years." 

There is not space to dwell at this point upon the draw- 
backs to be found in the present Armenian situation 
under Russian rule. The most that can be done is barely 
to indicate some of their causes. 

Russia, as a great despotic autocracy, twenty years ago 

showed marked signs of a great liberal movement along all 

lines. But the difficulties in the way of such 

Eussian ^ movement have been immense. The op- 

Eeaction. . . i i « 

position of the aristocracy, the outbreak of 

I^ihilism, the aversion to progress, all combined, as already 

noted, to bring about a reaction that was accelerated by 

the taking oif of Alexander the Liberator. His death 

brought a quick revulsion of feeling and an emphasizing 

of despotic methods. 

It is at the same time extremely doubtful whether any 

of the peoples of the Russian Empire are at all prepared 

for a larger measure of civil freedom, and whether the 

fulfillment of the mission of the empire would be at all 

possible without a strong despotic hand — such as that of 

Nicholas II. or of Alexander II. — in control. The wild 

tribes that constitute so large a portion of her more than 

100,000,000 of inhabitants are to be tamed and controlled 

and brought into unity and civilized, and that requires 

a hand always strong and sometimes rough and irresistible. 

The marvels that have already been accomplished with 

Cossack and Georgian and Kurd and Tatar, show what 

can be done in this way. Russia feels most profoundly 

that her work is to unify, weld together, and Russianize 

all the elements that make up the population of the empire. 

Her one aim is to make every one in the realm Russian. 

That has been her aim in dealing with Poles and Finns 



THE ARMENIAN'S IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 159 

and Jews, and that is lier aim in dealing with the 

Armenians of Transcaucasia. 

But the Armenians are an exception to the rest of the 

races. They have a long and distinguished history, large 

intelligence and intellectual activity, a noble 

Christian faith and record. They cherish -A-^^enmn 

"^ Enterprise, 

aspirations and hopes and ambitions of their 

own. Their education and trade have brought them in 

contact with and into sympathy with the progressive 

spirit of the West. In Transcaucasia they stand apart as 

representatives of the modern and progressive spirit. The 

results of their energy and enterprise are everywhere seen. 

Says Mr. Lynch : ^ 

" In every trade and in every profession, in business and in the 
Government services, the Armenian sees himself without a rival and 
in full possession of the field. He equips the postal service by which 
you travel, and if you ai-e so fortunate as to find an inn the landlord 
will be an Armenian. If the local governor attaches to your service 
the head of the local police, it will be a stalwart Armenian in Russian 
uniform, who will either find you a lodging or a shady garden in 
which to erect your tents. If you remark on the way some well-built 
edifice which aspires to architectural design, it will be the work of an 
Armenian builder from Alexandropol. In that town itself, where the 
Armenians are most numerous, the love of building, which was so 
marked a characteristic of their forefathers, has blossomed again 
among kinder circumstances ; a spacious cathedral and several large 
churches stand among new stone houses fronted with ambitious 
facades. In Erivan each richer merchant has lodged himself in an 
agreeable villa, whose Italian architecture will rise from the shade of 
poplars and willows and fruit trees laden with fruit. The excellent 
wine which is found in Erivan is made according to the newest 
methods by an Armenian who has studied for two years in Germany 
the most modern appliances of the industry in Europe. The monetary 
transactions of the country are in the hands of Armenian bankers. 
The skilled workmen, jewellers, watchmakers, carpenters, are Ar- 
menians. Even the ill-miened officer of mounted frontier police, 
whose long association with the wilder elements, Kurds and robbers 
of small and large degree, has lent him the appeai-ance of a chief of 
brigands will bear, not much to its honour, an Armenian name. The 

1 Contemporary Review, July, 1894, p. 97. 



160 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

large majority of the people do not speak Russian, or speak it very 
imperfectly. Indeed, were it not that the governors and chief police 
officials of large districts were Russians, and that Cossacks and Rus- 
sian regular soldiers may here and there be seen, the traveller would 
not suspect that he was in a Russian province and would go the way 
he listed with the most serene composure until he was rudely awakened 
by some abrupt collision with the Russian system and brought to his 
proper mind. As it is, the Armenian has edged out the Russian, 
and if peace were allowed its conquests unhindered he would ulti- 
mately rule the land." 

It is now nearly twenty years since Eussia won from 
the Turk her portion of the great Armenian Plateau^ and 
the Armenians have so far ^^ shown no signs of natural 
inclination to adopt Russian ways of thought." Rather 
they have made use of their advantages to improve the 
knowledge of their own history and literature and, like the 
modern Greek, to restore their language to its original 
purity, and to revive their national traditions. In all the 
resulting political movements the church has been a 
powerful factor, as being the one stable, unifying insti- 
tution of the Armenian people and as furnishing their 
leaders. 

One half or more of the Armenians on the Plateau are, 
as has been seen, on the Russian slope. On this resides at 
Etchmiadzin, near Erivan, the supreme ruler 
The Religious ^f ^^le Armenian Church— Catholicos Meger- 
ditch Khrimian. This noble Christian man 
'' has for many years been in the forefront of the Ar- 
menian movement, and has more than any man inspired 
the Armenians with a sense of their own dignity and of 
the worthiness of their past. . . . Through a long life he 
has exercised a magnetic influence upon his countrymen, 
and, while he has been loved and esteemed by all, he is 
the object of an almost suiDerstitious veneration on the 
part of the humble and poor." 

At Etchmiadzin also reside the four archbishops and four 
archimandrites constituting the Synod, of which the 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 161 

Catliolicos is the presiding officer. From this center the 
affairs of the Armenian Church — over the three Empires 
centering in Ararat — are administered. When the Cath- 
olicos dies, to Etchmiadzin come by invitation two dele- 
gates, one clerical and the other lay — from each of the two 
dioceses in Eussia, of the fifty-two in Turkey, and of the 
two (Tabriz and New Julfa) in Persia — to elect his suc- 
cessor. 

The seat of the Catliolicos at Etchmiadzin is also the 
center and the source of inspiration of the Armenian 
educational system — recently somewhat inter- 
fered with by the Russian Government — which _^J^^^}^^ 
i . . Education. 

IS entirely distmct from the Eussian and main- 
tained by the Church, It consists of seminaries, one of 
which is attached to each diocese, that provide for a higher 
education ; and of the parochial schools attached to many 
of the local churches, that furnish a high standard of ele- 
mentary education extending quite beyond the range of re- 
ligious and theological instruction. Five distinct grades 
were often maintained. Provision was often thus made in 
these schools of the Church for everything but the highest 
university education. The quality of the instruction will 
be better understood when we consider the fact that many 
of the teachers in them have been educated in the G-erman 
and other European universities. 

The result of all these influences, ecclesiastical and educa- 
tional, has been what may be called an Armenian Eenais- 
sance among the Armenians in the dominion of the Czar, 
that has resulted again in a general awakening of the 
Armenian spirit in the other Empires that center in 
Ararat, and in the people scattered abroad over the world. 
This movement, in connection with the constitution under 
which the Armenians of Eussia live, has brought about 
in recent years a state of things that has greatly com- 
plicated the Armenian problem, especially in Eussia. 

This will be better understood, in its nature and causes, 
II 



162 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

by considering the document that forms the Constitution 
regulating the relations of the Armenian 

Constitution J-~^^ ■, in.- J. XI T> • /-I 

of Nicholas Church and education to the Kussian Gov- 
ernment, which was signed by the Emperor 
Nicholas on March 23, 1836, It outlines the internal con- 
stitution of the Church, lays down the rules that are to gov- 
ern it in the administration of its own affairs, and defines 
its duties and privileges in connection with the Eussian 
Government. It recognizes the Armenian Church as the 
equal of the other religious bodies that exist under the rule 
of the Czar, and accords it freedom of worship. While 
holding the clergy subject to the Eussian civil law in all 
purely civil affairs it exempts them from all civil burdens. 
It recognizes the spiritual supremacy of the Catholicos, but 
develops and emphasizes the constitutional position of the 
Synod — constituted as already stated — in the administra- 
tion of the affairs of the Church, and frames -the regula- 
tions that define its relations of subordination and amena- 
bility to the State. In purely spiritual affairs, such as 
matters of doctrine and ritual, the Catholicos may act of his 
own motion ; but the general administration of the affairs 
of the Church must be conducted through the Synod, ac- 
cording to the Eussian laws that govern colleges, and under 
the supervision of the Minister of the Interior. A Pro- 
cureur or Controller, who speaks both Eussian and Ar- 
menian, is appointed by the Emperor to reside at Etchmi- 
adzin, supervises all the decrees of the Synod and pro- 
nounces upon their legality and constitutionality, and 
sends out the decrees headed, " By the order of the Em- 
peror of Eussia,^^ the titular head of the Synod. The Em- 
peror also appoints every bishop of a diocese, although the 
Catholicos presents the names of the candidates. When 
the Catholicos dies, the Synod at the expiration of a year 
sends invitations to all Armenian dioceses to send two dele- 
gates each to Etchmiadzin, which delegates with the Synod 
and seven of the oldest archimandrites in Etchmiadzin^ 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 163 

constitute the elective body. This body, assembled in the 
Church of the Illuminator, first chooses four candidates, 
from which it then selects two names which it submits to 
the Emperor through the governor of the Caucasus. The 
Emperor having made his choice among these, confirms the 
new Catholicos and receives his oath of allegiance through 
a representative sent to Etchmiadzin for that purpose. 
The Catholicos is then consecrated according to the cus- 
toms of the Armenian Church. This is the merest outline 
of the pretty complete and detailed statement made by the 
Constitution of Nicholas of the relations of the Armenian 
Church to the State. 

The same document defines the relations of the Ar- 
menian system of education to the Eussian Government, 
and states the regulations governing it. It describes the 
education to be given as moral and religious, and empha- 
sizes the importance, for the clerical body, of a knowledge 
of the language, the history, and the geography of Russia. 

The revival and extension of the Armenian national spirit 
has naturally brought them into conflict with these consti- 
tutional provisions. The tendency was well- 
nigh all-powerful to Armenianize, rather than Ambitions 
Russianize, everything. The Russian lan- 
guage, and instruction in Russian history, customs and in- 
stitutions, were practically excluded from many Armenian 
communities. The problem resulting was the same as that 
with the solution of which some of our communities and 
commonwealths in this country have had to struggle in 
consequence of the introduction of purely foreign com- 
munities, ignorant of our language, history and institu- 
tions, and declining to become Americanized. 

The unwise use of the Church and the schools, at the 
same time, for the furtherance of semi-political or quasi- 
political ends naturally roused the Russian Government to 
action for its own self-preservation. In 1884 a Ukase was 
promulgated, after the death of the late Catholicos and be- 



164 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

fore the election of his successor, placing every Church 
school having more than two grades or classes on the same 
basis as a private school, or in other words requiring that 
all its instruction be given in the Russian language. '' In 
the case of a school of two classes only, the lessons may be 
given in the Armenian language, but it is obligatory to teach 
the Russian language, and, where general geography and 
history are included, the history and geography of Russia 
must be taught in Russian. The curriculum of a school 
must be submitted to, and approved by, the. Russian edu- 
cational authorities, who are also invested with the right to 
apply to the Armenian spiritual government for the dis- 
missal of a teacher of whom they do not approve, and, fail- 
ing redress in this quarter, they can place the matter be- 
fore the governor of the Caucasus, who can order as he 
thinks fit. The seminaries, one of which is attached to 
each diocese and which provide a higher education, are ex- 
empted from the provisions of this decree, but their object 
is defined to be the preparation of clergymen to meet the 
requirements of the Armenian Church.^' 

The Synod deferred action upon the Ukase until a new 
Catholicos should be elected. The Government accord- 
ingly closed the schools, which were not again opened 
until Catholicos Makar in 1886 agreed to its provisions 
with some slight modifications. The higher schools have not 
been reopened. An old provision of the law, long a dead- 
letter, has been again brought out and enforced, requiring 
that " every teacher in an Armenian school shall be fur- 
nished with a certificate from the Russian pedagogic semi- 
nary, and shall have passed in the Russian language the 
necessary examination which entitles him to receive his 
award." In the mean time the Russian school system, 
largely furnished with Armenian teachers trained in the 
Russian pedagogic seminary at Erivan, but using the Rus- 
sian language, is being rapidly extended to supply the place 
of the Church schools. 



THE AKMENIANS TN THE EASTERN QUESTIEN. 165 

The strained relations with Russia that have been 
brought about mainly by the unwise action of the Ar- 
menians, have seriously interfered with the old 
cordial regard that naturally grew out of their Strained Rela- 
deliverance and protection by the Czar. The 
attitude of the Armenians in Turkey toward Russia has 
also been considerably modified, and new complications 
have thus been introduced into the Armenian problem in 
its wider sense. 

But the present interest in the Eastern Question centers 
in the Armenians in Turkey, and especially in those on 
the Turkish portion of the Great Plateau. 
The condition of the Armenians in this region 3._ Armenians 

in Tiirkfiv 

can be better understood by the contrast with 
their condition and accomplishments in the Russian prov- 
inces where they constitute so large and power- 
ful an element in the population. They have (!•) Onthe 
naturally desired to emigrate to the Russian 
provinces, and a great tide at one time set in that direc- 
tion, but the physical and ethnical features of Armenian 
Turkey have combined with the Turkish Government to 
prevent this. 

The physical features of this part of Armenia are of 
great importance. It is within the Turkish limits that the 
Armenian Plateau reaches its greatest height, rising as it 
does at the central watershed — on which the waters of the 
Araxes separate from those of the Eastern and Western 
Euphrates — to the height of 7,000 feet. The Ararat 
range, known in the country as the Agliri Dagh, runs 
along the boundary between Russia and Turkey, separating 
the valley of the middle Araxes from those of the Eastern 
and Western Euphrates. Beyond this extend the moun- 
tains of Azubaijan. This is a great natural barrier crossed 
only by passes that often attain a height of more than 8,000 
k feet, covered with almost perpetual snow, and making the 
i escape of • the Armenians into Russia practically impos- 

L 



166 THE CIiI]ME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

sible, except by the barred gateway of Erzrum, thereby 
placing them from that side absolutely at the mercy of 
Kurd and Turk. 

Equally hoj)eless for the Armenian Christian is escape 
over the Persian boundaries. The way over a wild and 
mountainous country is almost impassable. It leads 
through a barren region infested by lawless hordes of sav- 
age robbers, such as those inhabiting the Sandjak of 
Hakkiari. Escape in that direction would carry them 
through robbery and rape to certain persecution and pos- 
sible death at the hands of the implacable Persian who has 
not once for fifteen centuries forgotten his hate. To the 
southward there is no escape from the Plateau except 
through the wilds of the Taurus range infested by the most 
savage of the Kurdish clans, across the terrace-lands, or 
what is properly Kurdistan, into the arid plains of the 
Euphrates valley, where all pressure from outside civili- 
zation is removed and the barbarous Moslem are at their 
worst. Escape to the westward, if possible, would only 
end in falling into the clutches of the Turkish legions 
and the most fanatical of all the Moslem. So the Ar- 
menians are shut up by natural barriers in this prison- 
house of death, this dungeon of hell. 

And yet this Turkish Plateau is one of the most beau- 
tiful and picturesque regions of Western Asia, celebrated 
in Armenian song and history, containing in 
"^the EaS^ °^ ^^^ 40,000 to 50,000 square miles— about equal 
to New York or Pennsylvania — a great extent 
of fertile country and possessing attractions that might 
well have led to its selection twice as the cradle of the 
human race. It contains all the richest portions of the 
Armenian Plateau. Says Mr. Lynch : ^ 

" The Sultan still holds the greater portion of the plateau, and 
some of its richest districts are subject to his rule. If Russia is 
supreme in the valley of the Middle Araxes, the fertile country about 

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THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 167 

Lake Van belongs to Turkey ; tlie plains of Mush and Bulanik and, 
further west, the populous plain of Kharput, are all within the 
Turkish border, and compose an area of grain-growing country which 
is capable of supporting a population far more numerous than that 
which it at present maintains." 

These features indicate some of the possibihties of a 
region that but for "man's inhumanity to man" might 
still be a paradise. An added feature, especially note- 
worthy, is that the head-waters of navigation of both the 
Euphrates and Tigris rivers — at Samsat and Diarbekr — 
bring it within easy reach of the commerce of the world. 

Still more important is the present condition of the race 
elements of the Turkish plateau of Armenia. 
Certain features of it will be seen to make 
the Armenian Problem altogether peculiar in its factors. 

The question of population is always a difficult one in 
such regions. The most that can be done is to make an 
approximate estimate on the basis of the official lists, 
published in the almanacs of the governments of the prov- 
inces, and the records in the books of the diocesan author- 
ities of the Armenian Church. The official list of the 
Mohammedan population is estimated from the military 
enrollment which, as it subjects him to military service, 
each man does his best to evade. The enrollment of 
births of Christians in the diocesan records obliges the 
payment of an annual tax, which exempts from military 
service and which begins with the birth, thus furnishing 
a powerful incentive to under-estimating the Christian 
male population. In large districts on the southern bor- 
der of the Plateau there has never been a count of the 
practically independent Kurdish tribes. The female popu- 
lation, owing to the Oriental habits of seclusion, is never 
counted and never enters into any of these records. Mr. 
Lynch first marks out the limits of the Plateau, and then 
gives his estimate, of the number of its peoples. He says ; ^ 

J Contemporary Eeview, September, 1894, p. 439, 



168 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

" I have found it convenient to follow the method which was adopted 
in the case of the Russian territory, and to select those existing gov- 
ernmental divisions which correspond in a general manner to the area 
of the plateau. The area of these governmental divisions composes 
the political area with which we shall deal. For this purpose I have 
taken the following Governments, or divisions of Governments : 
the whole of the Government of Erzrum, that portion of the Gov- 
ernment of Van which constitutes the Sandjak or governmental div- 
ision of Yan, the whole Government of Bitlis with the exception of 
the Sandjak of Sert, which belongs to the terrace land. On the 
west I have included that small portion of the Government of Diar- 
bekr which is formed by the Caza or governmental subdivision of Palu, 
and the whole of the Government of Kharput, which includes the 
Deyrsim, with the exception of the Sandjak of Malatia. The super- 
ficial measurement of the area obtained in this manner amounts to 
about 42,000 square miles." 

Mr. Lynch's estimate, wliicli agrees in the main with 
that made several years earlier by Mr. Taylor, for a long 
time the British consul at Erzrum, is in round numbers 
as follows : 

' Turks Sunni Mohammedans 450,000 

^ Sunni Mohammedans 300,000 

^ ^ Kizzilbashes 110,000 

{ Gregorians 364,000 

Armenians. < Roman Catholic 20,000 

' Protestant 16,000 

Greeks 5,000' 

Others 7,000 



Moslem. 



Christian. 



Total 1,272,000 

Possibly it may be necessary to add from 10 to 20 per 
cent, to the Armenian element in order to reach the real 
number. 

A special complication in the Armenian Problem, already 

hinted at, arises from the distribution on the 

Mingling Plateau and the manner of life of the three 
of Races. 

main racial elements — Turks, Kurds and 

Armenians — each numbering about the same. While the 

three elements are to some extent scattered over the 

Plateau, still each has its particul^-r belt in which it largely 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 169 

predominates, A north and south line drawn from the 
southern terrace hinds through Mush and Erzrum to the 
Eussian boundary, Avill furnish a convenient starting-place 
for a description of the three peoples and the three belts. 

The belt to the north of Erzrum, chiefly to the east 
of this line of departure, is that of the Turkish 
peoples, loosely so-called. They predominate No^t^eJ"!! 
in the region reaching out to the Eussian 
boundary on the north, to the Deyrsim, or country of the 
Kizzilbashes, on the west, and to the Persian boundary at 
the base of Mt. Ararat on the east. "We say Turks, loosely 
so-called, for they embrace, besides peoples of Tatar origin, 
many descendants of G-eorgians and Armenians, who have 
become fanatical adherents of Islam. Those Turkish 
peoples are largely engaged in agricultural and other in- 
dustrial pursuits and in the civil service of the Grovern- 
ment, and have the settled and industrious habits to which 
the full-blooded Turk has been seen to be especially averse. 

The central belt, to the south of Erzrum, reaching 
both east and west of the line of departure, is that of 
the Armenians. They are the powerful ele- 
ment from Lake Van westward through all 
the rich valleys to the terrace lands beyond Kharput. Of 
their distribution in this region, Mr. Lynch writes : ^ 

" Compared with the ntimber of the Mussulman inhabitants they 
are in greater strength in the Government of Van than in any other 
Government : taking that Government as a whole, but of course ex- 
cluding the Hakkiari, they exceed by about one-third the total of 
the Mussulman population. In the town of Yan the proportion of 
Armenians to Mussulmans is about as two to one. In the Govern- 
ment of Bitlis they are in a majority in the neighborhood of Mush, 
and in the fertile district of Bulanik, northwest of the Lake of Van. 
On the other hand, they are outnumbered by the Mussulmans in the 
populous Sandjak of Kharput, and in the Caza or governmental sub- 
division of Palu. In the Government of Erzrum there is scarcely 
a district in which they are not less numerous than their Mussulman 
neighbors." 

1 Contemporary Review, September, 1894, p. 449. 



170 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

Their relative importance is, however, mncli greater than 
■would be indicated by their numbers. In the first place, 
the Gregorian Church on this Plateau has resisted more 
effectively than anywhere else all attacks upon the political, 
social and religious solidarity of the Armenian race. Not 
more than 20,000 perverts to Eomanism have resulted 
from the centuries of effort on the part of Rome. Probably 
less than that number have been brought under the influ- 
ence of the recent Protestant missionaries from America, 
and these have not broken with their original Church and 
race, but remain as a purifying and elevating influence in 
the midst of these. In the second place, the fact that 
they occupy the richest portion of the Plateau greatly in- 
creases their wealth and influence. 

The third belt, that to the south of Mush, is the Kurd- 
ish. It reaches east aud west to the limits of the Pla- 
teau, and south to the Taurus range, and its 
^°^*^®^" people by migrations and wanderings make 
themselves felt across the Taurus range and 
the terrace lands beyond, to the valleys of the Euphrates and 
the Tigris. These peojsle of what may be called Kurdistan 
need to be specially considered, for the reason that aut of 
their peculiar composition and characteristics have arisen 
some special complications of the Armenian Problem that 
have sometimes been almost mistaken for the whole of it. 
The Kurds in this region arc found in every stage and form 
of social development, from the nomadic to the settled state, 
from the wandering and predatory band, through the tribal 
and communal organizations, up to the stricter govern- 
mental control from Stamboul. But essential differences 
of language and creed separate the Kurds of the Plateau into 
two great and somewhat antagonistic elements. 

Kizziibashes, u,eachin2: across the three belts, to the west of 
Kurds. ° 

Erzrum, is the region of the Kizzilbashes. 

Mr. Lynch gives the following account of them : ^ 

1 Contemporary Review, September, 1894, p. 444. 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QtTEsTlON. 171 

" From the neigliborliood of the town of Sivas in Asia Minor to be- 
yond Malatia on tlie south, and between the two branches of the Eu^ 
plirates to the vicinity of Musli, the Kurds, althougli classed in the 
official lists as Mussulmans, neither practise the orthodox religion 
nor speak the same dialect as their neighbors of kindred race. 
Branded throughout the nearer East luider the opprobrious name of 
Kizzilbash they harbor a sullen hatred of the Turkish Government, 
whose attempts to convert them to orthodoxy they resent ; while 
towards the Christians they are drawn by the impulse of a common 
antagonism to the existing order, and by the respect in which they 
hold the Chi'istian religion, in the person of whose Founder they rec- 
ognize an incarnation of God. Their religion, so far as we know it, 
bears the impress of the Aryan mind, which seeks for a human em- 
bodiment of the Deity : they invest with divine attributes Moses and 
Jesus, Mohammed and Ali. Their language, although a branch of 
the Kurdish, contains an admixture botli of Persian and Armenian 
words, and is said to differ so greatly from the prevailing dialect of 
tlie Kurdisli tongue that those who are familiar with the one are un- 
able to understand the other. Wliile they practise the rite of cir- 
cumcision and have adopted certain of the observances of Islam, the 
contempt in which their religion is held by their Mussulman neighbors 
of the Suuni sect disposes them against the dominant creed in which 
they recognize the most dangerous enemy of their own peculiar faith. 
In brief, tliey constitute a separate element in the Kurdisli popula- 
tion of the plateau, and the numerical value of this element may be 
placed at a third of the total figure which I have given for the Turk- 
ish Kurds. Their geographical position between and about tlie two 
branches of the Euphrates invests them with some contemporary im- 
portance from a military point of view : and they hold the wild and 
mountainous country on the south of the headquarters of the Turkish 
Army Corps at the town of Erzingan. In this district, wliich is known 
under tlie name of the Deyrsim, they have long resisted and continue 
to resist the imposition of the Turkish yoke. They are here in the 
tribal and pastoral state, but they have been obliged, by the rigor of 
the climate, to build houses, and they cultivate small strips of land. 
In the country on the west and east of the Deyrsim the Kizzilbashes 
are peaceful and industrious peasants, of whom most travellers have 
spoken with respect." 

In the third belt, to the eastward of Mush and reach- 
ing to the Persian boundary, are found the genuine Kurds, 

the Sunni Mohammedans, who profess the or- _ . ^ , 

Genniue Kurds, 
thodox faith and speak the proper dialect of 



172 THE CKIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

Kurdistan. They are a people of Aryan stock and their 
" original home and natural habitation " are the mountains 
of the terrace-land south of the Plateau — the Taurus and 
Zagros ranges and along the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf. 
Their common characteristic everywhere and always has 
been inveterate aversion to the yoke of law and to settled 
life. Their habitat has determined their character and 
manner of life in accordance with their nature. 

For ages the Kurds of this terrace-land have kept up 
their annual migratory movements. With the approach 
of winter "a continuous throng of sheep and goats and 
horses and weather-worn people of either sex and of every 
age flows slowly down the blighted country, filing by tor- 
tuous tracks between the boulders or pausing, about the 
noonday hour, by the bed of a shaded stream/' to the vast 
alluvial plains of the Tigris where tents are pitched for the 
winter months. When summer comes and vegetation is 
withered by the summer heat, they find their way up the 
mountain sides, advancing with the drought until they 
reach and spread out over the southern portion of the 
Armenian Plateau. Gradually remnants of these hordes 
have been left behind on the Plateau, being unable to keep 
up their migration to the distant valley of the Tigris. 
Huts of more or less substantial character, as a necessary 
protection against the rigors of a northern winter, have 
taken the place of their tents, as they have gathered in 
villages, and some of them have mingled with the Turks 
and settled down to an industrious peasant life, while a 
larger number have retained their independence and tribal 
character and nomadic habits. They occupy the southern 
border of the Plateau. 

A wilder and more intractable Kurdish element was 
brought to the Plateau by a definite act of public policy on 
the part of the Turkish Government. Mr. Lynch relates 
how this was done : ^ 

1 Contemporary Review, September, 1894, p. 446. 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 173 

"After the defeat of the Persians in tlie plain of Chalderan in 1514 
it became necessary to arrive at a permanent settlement of the Kurdish 
provinces ; and it formed part of a plan pursued by Edrlsi, the dis- 
tinguished Minister of Selim the First, and himself a Kurd of Bitlis, 
to remove a portion of this turbulent people from the country of 
their home and to settle them along the new frontier of Turkey in the 
districts bordering upon Persia and Georgia which had been acquired 
from the Shah. It is said that they were granted a perpetual im- 
munity from taxation on the condition that they would act as a per- 
manent militia upon the border which had been given them to 
guard." 

These Kurds have thus been made the predominant ele- 
ment in tlie region to the north and east of Lake Van, 
where they have proved to be a perpetual 
curse to Moslem and Christian alike in peace midieh 
and in war. The reigning Sultan has sought 
to organize them in a military way and bring them into con- 
nection with the regular Turkish army, as a kind of irregular 
cavalry under the name of Hamidieh (from his own name), 
now becoming so familiar as a name of horror. He has es- 
tablished the headquarters at Melazgerd, north of Lake 
Van, and over thirty regiments, nominally of about 600 
men each, have been — not organized, for organization is 
an impracticable thing with this people under present 
conditions — registered, liberally furnished with arms and 
uniforms from the Turkish magazines, and turned loose 
upon the helpless Armenians who are not allowed to 
possess arms of any kind. The Eusso-Turkish War demon- 
strated two things concerning them : their worthlessness as 
soldiers, and their atrocious cruelty to those who from 
wounds or other causes were unable to defend themselves. 

Especially have these Kurds proved a scourge and a 
terror to the Armenian Christians, making protection of 
life and property an impossibility. The difficulties of the 
situation and the way in which it has been brought about are 
well described by Mr. Lynch : ^ 

1 Contemporary Keview, September, 1894, pp. 448-9. 



174 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

" Transplanted from their natural camping grounds and obliged 
through the long months of an Arctic winter to provide themselves 
and their animals with shelter and with food, this pastoral people 
were quartered on the Armenian villages, but were required by 
Government to pay an annual tax in i-eturn for the accommodation 
which during winter they received. But an arrangement which 
was based on the just principle of insuring to the Armenian a fair 
remuneration for the lodging which he furnished, and the fodder 
which he supi^lied, was put into practice by the local authorities in 
a characteristic manner : the proceeds of the tax were committed to 
their own coffers and their proper destination was ignored. In 
1842, after the promulgation of the celebrated charter of reforms 
which is known under the name of the Hatti-Sherif of Gulkhane, a 
beginning was made toward the abolition of the system ; the Kurds 
in the neighborhood of Mush were allotted certain villages which had 
been vacated by the Armenian emigrants, and the Armenians of the 
district were relieved of the heavy burden which they had previously 
been obliged to bear. At the present day, the pastoi-al Kurds of 
the plateau have all their ovvn villages, and the old system, except in 
isolated instances, may be said to have disappeared. Yet even now 
they justify their raids upon the Armenians on the ingenious plea of 
the ancient right of quarter which they consider they are entitled 
to enforce. Policy also dictates a course which their tender con- 
science has approved. The Armenians are at once the most immediate 
and the least redoubtable among their neighbors. The courageous 
Kurd equips himself for the foray with a rifle of modern EvTSsian 
pattern and belts bristling with cartridges ; his victims, by a cruel 
and cynical provision, have been deprived by Government of all 
arms. If the Kurd is caught red-handed and is arraigned before 
the civil authority, he will scornfully defy the civil jurisdiction and 
claim to be tried by his military superiors as a trooper in the Hami- 
dich Corps. When the civil branch has been successfully thwarted, 
the military authorities are cajoled, while the injured party is rewarded 
by the visitation of a fresh injury, which he endures without com- 
plaint." 

Mr. Lynch places the difficulties that arise from the pres- 
ence of the Kurdish population on the Plateau at the 
... kernel of the Armenian Question in Turkey, 
menian Ques- It has doubtless made that Question much 
tion. more complicated than it is elsewhere in the 
Turkish dominion ; for here the Turkish civil and military 



THE ATIMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 175 

authorities have needed sinply to let loose upon the help- 
less Christians these Hamidieh^ already more than eager 
for blood and plunder, and clothed with the authortiy 
of the Sultan, the representative of Mohammed and God. 
While therefore it seems clear that the root of the East- 
ern Question, in Armenia as well as elsewhere, is found in 
the very nature of the " unspeakable Turk " himself as de- 
veloped and controlled by the religion of Islam, it must 
no doubt be conceded that on the Armenian Plateau of 
Turkey its difficulties have been immensely aggravated by 
the presence of the Kurdish hordes that furnish the Turk 
so facile an instrument of persecution and torture. Just 
such butcheries as those that have recently occurred, and 
on a scale so tremendous, would have been impossible 
without the Turk and the Kurd combined and both fired 
with the spirit of the False Prophet of Mecca. To take 
the Biblical figure, the Armenians in the belt between 
the Turk and the Kurd have been crushed between the 
upper and the nether millstones. 

But the Armenian Question in Turkey has another 
aspect, in which it extends far beyond the Armenian 
Plateau of Turkey. By the Berlin Treaty the 

Sublime Porte engaged to introduce reforms ^^^ Scattered 
° . . over Turkey, 

in the '^ Provinces inhabited by the Arme- 
nians." That gave a vague and uncertain extension to the 
sphere of proposed Turkish effort at reform. In the other 
portions of the Empire there are probably six times as 
many Armenians as there are dwelling on the Turkish 
Plateau, the number of Armenians in all Turkey, as given 
at the Berlin Congress, being 3,000,000. It has been 
held by some that the number was exaggerated for political 
effect. However that may be, the 2,000,000 more or less, 
outside the limits of the Plateau, are chiefly scattered over 
the provinces of Asia Minor or gathered in C£)nstanti- 
nople and the larger centers of trade and commerce. These 
people are not cursed — as are those of the Plateau — with 



176 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

the presence of tlie Knrdisli hordes. Then* situation in 
other respects is in general very much the same as that 
of other Christians during all the century under Moham- 
medan rule. They have all along been subject to the same 
disabilities. Exorbitant and extortionate taxation to the 
extent of ruin has been their constant lot. They have 
been helplessly exposed to every possible form of injust- 
ice and violence from the Moslems, as Christian evidence 
is not admissible against a Mohammedan while every man's 
lie has passed for truth against a Christian. The Ar- 
menians, with all other Christians, are forbidden by the 
Sacred Law of Islam to possess arms. In the Treaty of 
Paris in 1856 the Sultan engaged to put the Christians 
in the Empire on the same footing in this and all other 
respects as his Mohammedan subjects. This, however, re- 
mained a dead letter. When the Great Powers, in the 
Berlin Memorandum in 1876, proposed to demand the ful- 
fillment of this provision of the Treaty, Lord Derby set 
himself against and defeated it, on the ground, as we have 
seen, that if the Christians were permitted to have arms it 
mip-ht bring about a collision with the Turks ! And so they 
were turned over to the tender mercies of the armed butcher 
by a British Premier! Encouraged by British aid, "the 
Sultan appealed to Sheik-ul-Islam (the supreme arbiter 
without whom the Sultan cannot alter an atom of the Sacred 
Law)," and having summoned the hierarchy of the XJlema 
in consultation, he impudently and defiantly issued his 
peremptory fetwah — in 1877 during the very sessions of 
the Conference at Constantinople — against the possession 
of arms by Christians, on the ground that the unchange- 
able Sacred Law forbade it ! ^ 

The thrift of the Armenians and the beauty of their 
women have subjected them, in an unusual degree, from 
the beginning, to the horrors of the Gazdalik, or Hospi- 
tality Tax. In addition to these things there have been 
iSee Parliamentary Papers of 1S11-S, pp. 176, 177. 



THE ARMENIANS IN THE EASTERN QUESTION. 177 

special features in the woe of the Armenian Christians all 
over Turkey, especially in these later times. To begin 
with, their independent ecclesiastical standing has left 
them outside the sympathies of the rest of Christendom. 
Tlie Greek Christian in Turkey could appeal to Eussia ; 
the Eoman Catholic to France, Italy and Austria ; the 
Protestant, to Germany, Great Britain and the United 
States, — all these could be sure of sympathy if not of help ; 
but the Armenian had been outside the ordinary Chris- 
tendom and friendless. 

Moreover, the great mass of Armenian Christians have 
met their fate beyond the reach of any helpful arm ; in- 
deed, it has too often been the case that their cry of 
distress could not break through the strong barriers of 
Turkish rule so as to reach the ears of Christendom. 
Especially has the position on the great Plateau — between 
the upper and nether millstones of Turkish fanaticism 
and Kurdish atrocity — been to them the silent gate of 
death. 

Still further, the setting free of so large a portion of 
European Turkey by the Treaty of Berlin brought to the 
Armenian people a crisis of extortion and oppression many- 
fold more acute than any that had previously been known 
to them or to any of the other Christian peoples of 
the Turkish Empire. From the date of that Treaty it 
has practically been necessary for the Sultan to support 
his Government by what means could be wrung from the 
peoples of the Macedonian belt of European Turkey and 
from the Armenians over the Empire. The Macedonian 
belt had already been harried and robbed into utter poverty ; 
besides it was under the eye of Europe and so under partial 
protection ; and still further the Turk has been in special 
terror of uprisings in the Balkans. The thrifty and rich 
Armenians were thus brought to the point Avhere the 
robber Turk demanded of them — what had formerly been 
furnished by Greek and Slav and Macedonian and Arme- 
iz 



178 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

nian — to furnisli the means for supporting the Turkish 
Empire and the great harem at the Yildiz Kiosk. It is 
thus easy to see why in their case such an acute stage 
has been reached. 

But worst and most aggravating of all is the fact that 
Commercial England^ by her long course of iniquity in sus- 
taining Turkey^ has forced and encouraged that Empire to 
roll up a vast debt — originally somewhere between one 
thousand millions and two thousand millions of dollars, 
since scaled down but still many hundred millions, held in 
England, France and Germany — largely by Englishmen — 
on which the Turk must pay the interest. It is thus the 
hideous spectacle of the Christian Shylocks of Lombard 
Street, Paris and Berlin, calling upon the Turk for the 
pound of flesh, which the Turk takes from the Armenian 
with his heart's blood ! It is thus that in the last analysis 
the cry of the Christian bondholder for gold is respon- 
sible for the Armenian Christian's cry of agony, on the 
plains of Armenia, in the provinces of Asia Minor, and in 
the streets and suburbs of Constantinople. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 

The view given of the Armenians themselves, in their 
history, religion and environment, has prepared for taking 
up and understanding the facts concerning the massacres 
of 1894, 1895 and 1896, with their aim, organization and 
execution. Three successive years of butchery have al- 
ready been recorded that have gone far toward blotting 
out the Armenian religion and race. 

I. FiKST Ybae of Butchery, 1894. 

The horrors of the Armenian story during these three 
years have been too many and too intense to be detailed 
or depicted. One shrinks from the story, but justice and 
mercy demand that a summary of it be here given, — nay, 
the fact that the governments of Christendom have heard 
it without heeding demands that it be reiterated by every 
one who has in him a spark of awakened humanity, until 
all the Christian nations shall be roused from the moral 
stupor that now rests upon them like the pall of death, 
and shall hasten to strike down the red-handed murderers ; 
until the protest of William "Watson, in " The Purple East " 
and " The Year of Shame, ^' shall become the passionate 
oiitcry of Christendom against the acquiescence not only 
of England but of all the so-called Christian Powers in that 
f' Yicegerency of Hell," the Ottoman Empire I 



180 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 



(I.) Events Leading to It. 

The increased pressure of Commercial Christendom, 
under the lead of Commercial England, upon the Arme- 
nians through the Turk, beffan, as already 
cial Pressure' suggested, with the Treaty of Berlin. Ten 
years or more passed before it reached its 
acute stage. The Armenians had from the beginning been 
a thrifty people— largely, as has been seen, the traders, 
merchants and bankers of the Turkish Empire — and it 
took years to impoverish them utterly. Fear of another 
uprising of the Slavic races led to greater pressure of tax- 
ation in distant Armenia. About 1890 it began to be ap- 
parent that they were nearing the hour of their extremity. 
Eor ten years the Turk, urged on by Christian greed, 
took his pound of flesh from the helpless and patient 
Armenian, without restraint of justice or mercy, until the 
life-blood was reached and no more could be furnished 
without taking the life with it. The course of the Turk 
from that to the final butcheries and threatened extermi- 
nation has been easy and natural. 

The following brief sketch of the facts is drawn from 
sources that are unquestionable. There are three j)oints 
that can readily be made plain : 

(1) The slow work of impoverishing the Armenians 
reached a crisis about 1890, from which time and on- 
ward robbery, rape and murder began to reign on the 
Plateau. 

(2) Erom the opening of 1894 the chief Armenian 
centers on the Plateau, and elsewhere, whenever beyond 
Christian protection, have been deluged with blood. 

(3) The butchery was organized by the Turkish Govern- 
ment and directed from Stamboul. 

The extreme pressure of Turkish taxation was reached 
about 1890, and the masses of the Armenians, 
Ji^ving been drained of their wealth and be- jieacheft, 



THE ARMENIAN CllISIS AND MASSACRES. 181 

ing unable to furnish anything more, began to be sub- 
jected to all the horrors of the Turkish system in its worst 
form. 

The Turk in his conquests of Christian lands gave the 
Christians choice of three things, and put the choice with 
an emphatic climax : " Ye Christian dogs, the Koran, 
tribute, or the sword ! " Not to choose the Koran required 
that a man should be true and brave in an unusual degree. 
It was to choose to remain a ^^dog," an object of perpetual 
contempt and abuse to even the meanest Mohammedan 
beggar. In case of failure in paying the tribute it meant 
the sword — death ! 

The tribute or the taxation imposed by the Turkish 
system, has proved at its best almost as bad as death, at its 
worst worse than death, and has ordinarily been the sure 
road to ultimate death to great numbers of all the races 
that made choice of it. That at its best it is almost as bad 
as death is shown by a consideration of what Christian tax- 
ation, in its narrowest sense, under Turkish rule includes. 
Canon MacColl has given a summarized account of it in 
" England's Eesponsibility towards Armenia. ^^ It must be 
borne in mind that Christians must, to begin with, pay the 
same taxes as all other citizens pay, that is, the ordinary 
taxes, and that these under corrupt Mohammedan rule often 
bear heavily upon even the Moslem subjects of the Sultan, 
while they leave the Christian peasant not more than one- 
third of his crop. But, as has been shown elsewhere, 
this is but a small part of his burdens. That at its worst 
the Turkish tribute system is worse than death, becomes 
apparent when we take it in its widest sense as inckiding 
the Hospitality Tax. That the Moslem tribute system 
has ordinarily been the sure road to ultimate death to 
great numbers of all the races that made choice of it is 
demonstrated by the massacres of Christians that occurred 
periodically from Mohammed down to the present at- 
tempted extermination of the Armenians. 



182 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

But never has tlie system in all its horrid details and 

its dreadful accompaniments been carried out with, any 

people so thoroughly as with the Armenians. 
Tribute System . t j -j •^.x^ ±t • j; xi 

Applied -^^ already said, with the opening of the 

present decade, they have been brought by the 

taxes in the strict sense to the pinch of poverty. On 

the Armenian Plateau the Kurds were let loose upon them 

by the Turk to help him in his work of extortion. The 

state of things resulting was described by Mr. Clifford 

Lloyd, Consul at Erzrum, in a report dated October 

2, 1890 : 

"'The Armenian peasantry are unable at present to pay their 
taxes, owing to the ravages of the Kurds. . . . But the Christians, 
having been reduced to a state of poverty by the action of the 
neighboring Kurds in plundering and burning tlieir harvest with 
impunity, were unable to pay their taxes, or to provide for the 
following season's agricultural implements.' " 

This condition prevailed over the entire Turkish portion 
of the Plateau, and was approximated in many of the Ar- 
menian communities outside the Plateau. The failure of 
the Christian to pay his taxes was taken by the Government 
as a refusal to pay them, and that according to the Sacred 
Law of Islam was the forfeiture of all his property and his 
life as well. 

Matters naturally went from bad to worse. The most 
revolting features of the tribute system were brought in 
by the armed robbers who settled themselves on the Chris- 
tians, and claimed the Hospitality Tax, as an aid in collect- 
ing the other taxes. Everything brutal — robbery, rape, 
murder — came then in turn, in the first three 

Bmtality. o^ ^^^^^ years of the decade. This was a time 
of transition from what Dr. Dillon calls the 
period of " shameful misgovernment " — from 1847, when 
Osman Pasha reduced to subjection the Kurdish Derebeks 
in the five southeastern provinces (Van, Bitlis, Mush, 
Bayazed and Diarbekr) — to the period of " frank exter- 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 183 

minatlon^' (1891-1894). Only instances can be given of 
the earlier work of oppression and dishonor. 

Take one instance from tlie region near Bitlis, as related 
officially by Mr. Hampson, the British Con- 
sul at Erzruni, under date of January 30, 
1891, and recorded in the Blue Book.^ 

" A band of thirty mounted police wliicli were on the march were 
billeted for the night in a small Armenian village of ten houses, a 
few hours distant from Bitlis. Four of them were quartered in the 
house of a young married Armenian. Overhearing them discussing 
plans against his wife's honour, he secretly sent her to the house of a 
neighbour. When the zaptiehs learnt this they ordered him to send 
for her, and, on refusing to do so, beat him most cruelly. lie fled to 
a neighbour's house, but, two days later, died from the effects of the 
ill-treatment which he had received. Four doctors, three of them 
Turks, and the other a Christian, examined the body, and the latter 
had the courage, in the face of the opinions given by the others, to 
certify to the real cause of the death. In the houses where the other 
zaptiehs were quartered their designs against the female members 
of the family were carried out without resistance." 

Take another from the Blue Book, in which figures Hus- 
sein Agha, Mudir (or district governor) of 
Patmoss. The British Consul at Erzrum ^^^^^^ ^ *• 
writes under date of March 7, 1891.^ 

*' Fifteen days ago Hussein, with his nephew, entered by night 
the house of an Armenian, named Caspar, in Patmoss, with the in- 
tention of carrying off Caspar's daughter-in-law, a very beautiful 
young woman. The inhabitants of the house cried out for help, on 
which Hussein drew his revolver and fired, killing the woman on 
the spot." 

These are but mild illustrations of the reign of terror 
that took on a worse form in the Armenian Plateau about 
the opening of the j^resent decade. Most of the recorded 
instances are too horrible to be presented here, and the 

1 Turkey, No. 1 (1S92), p. 9. 

2 Turkey, No. 1 (1892), p. 25. 



184 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

worst have neyer found record save in the book of God's 
judgments. And let it be remembered, says Dr. Dillon, 
"that these statements are neither rumors nor exaggera- 
tion concerning which we are justified in suspending our 
judgment." They are the mild and restrained statements 
of British and other officials, who are required by their 
position not to overstate things, and inclined from their 
relations to the Turkish Government and people to under- 
state them. And let it be remembered too that these are 
not exceptional and rare cases ; they have been for years 
matters of common everyday occurrence over a region of 
the Plateau as large as the State of New York, and at a 
later date extending widely over the other Turkish prov- 
inces. And these are the cases in which the Christian's 
choice of the Cross before the Koran, his preference of 
Turkish tribute to the Koran, has brought him to results 
worse than even death itself ! 

Some of the readers of this account will perhaps recall 
a pathetic and heart-rending appeal, made by an Armenian 

lady educated by the Protestant Christians, to 
segh. ' ^6^ Christian sisters in England. Dr. Dillon 

thus recalls the appeal and the events that led 
to it : 1 

" One of the abducted young women who having been outraged 
by the son of the Deputy-Governor of Khnouss, Hussni Bey, re- 
turned, a pariah, and is now alone in the world, lately appealed to 
her English sisters for such aid as a heathen would give to a brute, 
and she besought it in the name of our common God. Lucine Mus- 
segh — this is the name of that outraged young woman whose Protes- 
tant education gave her, as she thought, a special claim to act as the 
spokeswoman of Armenian mothers and daughters — Lucine Mussegh 
besought, last March, the women of England to obtain for the Avonien 
of Armenia the privilege of living a pure and chaste life ! This Avas 
the boon which she craved — but did not, could not, obtain. The in- 
terests of ' higher politics,' the civilising mission of the Christian 
Powers are, it seems, incompatible with it ! ' For the love of the 

1 Contemporary Review, January, 1896, p. 11. 



THE ARMENIAN- CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 185 

God whom we worship in common,' wrote this outraged, but still 
hopeful, Armenian lady, ' help us. Christian sisters ! Help us before 
it is too late, and take the thanks of the mothers, the wives, the 
sisters, and the daughters of my people, and with them the gratitude 
of one for whom, in spite of her youth, death would come as a happy 
release.' " 

^Nothing has ever been done to answer Lucine Mns- 
segh^s 'prayer ! And yet England bound herself by the 
Treaty of Berlin to protect the Armenian Christians, and 
shut out all others from doing it ! 

Dr. Dillon touches upon the story of the plan of exter- 
mination — in its spontaneous stage — during the seventeen 
" long years of Turkish vigor and English 

sluggishness \" First, came the period when.„^P°"*^"®°l^® 

Y° . , • Extermination. 

'' all those Armenians who possessed money 

or money's worth were for a time allowed to purchase im- 
munity from prison, and from all that prison life in Asia 
Minor implies." Then, when this method had been ex- 
hausted, " terror and summary confiscation took the place 
of slow and elaborate extortion, the gloomy dungeons of 
Erzrum, Erzingan, Marsovan, Hassankaleh, and Van 
were filled, till there was no place to sit down, and scarcely 
sufficient standing room." In these prisons the very worst 
class of Tatar and Kurdish criminals were turned loose 
upon the Christians to torture them. It was almost the 
renewal of the Black Hole of Calcutta with loathsome 
diseases, still more loathsome vices, horrible blasphemies, 
revolting obscenities and ribald jests, " alternated with 
cries of pain, songs of vice, and prayers to the unseen God," 
all added. Dr. Dillon's account of one of the instances of 
the application of torture to a Christian by the Turkish 
officials will illustrate the entire Turkish policy : ^ 

" Into these prisons venerable old ministers of religion were dragged 
from their churches, teachers from their schools, missionaries from 

1" Armenia: An Appeal." Contemporary Review, January, 1S96, 
pp. 9-10. 



186 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

their meeting-houses, merchants, physicians, and peasants from their 
firesides. Those among them who refused to denounce their friends, 
or consent to some atrocious crime, were subjected to horrible agonies. 
Many a one, for instance, was put into a sentry-box bristling with 
sharp spikes, and forced to stand there motionless, without food or 
drink, for twenty-four and even thirty-six hours, was revived with 
stripes whenever he fell fainting to the prickly floor, and was carried 
out unconscious at the end. It was thus that Imndreds of Armenian 
Christians, whose names and histories are on record, suffered for 
refusing to sign addresses to the Sultan accusing their neighbors and 
relatives of high treason. It was thus that Azo was treated by his 

judges, the Turkish officials, Talib Effendi, Captain 

The Torture of Reshid, and Captain Hadji Fehim Agha, for declin- 

Azo. ing to swear away the lives of the best men of his 

vi^llage. A whole night was spent in torturing him. 
He was first bastinadoed in a room close to which his female rela- 
tives and friends were shut up so that they could hear his cries. 
Then he was stripped naked, and two poles, extending from his 
armpits to his feet, were placed on each side of his body and tied 
tightly. His arms were next stretched out horizontally and poles 
arranged to support his hands. This living cross was then bound to 
a pillar, and the flogging began. The whips left livid traces behind. 
The wretched man was unable to make the slightest movement to 
ease his pain. His features alone, hideously distorted, revealed the 
anguish he endured. The louder he cried, the more heavily fell the 
whip. Over and over again he entreated his tormentors to put him 
out of pain, saying : ' If you want my death, kill me with a bullet, 
but for God's sake don't torture me like this ! ' His head alone being 
free he, at last, maddened by excruciating pain, endeavored to dash 
out his brains against the pillar, hoping in this way to end his agony. 
But this consummation was hindered by the police. They questioned 
him again ; but in spite of his condition, Azo replied as before : ' I 
cannot defile my soul with the blood of innocent people. I am a 
Christian.' Enraged at this obstinacy, Talib Effendi, the Turkish 
official, ordered the application of other and more eifective tortures. 
Pincers were fetched to pull out his teeth ; but, Azo remaining firm, 
this method was not long persisted in. Then Talib commanded his 
servants to pluck out the prisoner's moustachios by the roots, one 
hair at a time. This order the gendarmes executed with roars of In- 
fernal laughter. But, this treatment proving equally ineffectual, 
Talib instructed his men to cauterize the unfortunate victim's body. 
A spit was heated in the fire. Azo's arms were freed from their 
supports, and two brawny policemen approached, one on each side, 



THE AllMENIAN CllISIS AND MASSACr.ES. 187 

and seized him. Meanwhile another gendarme held to the middle 
of the wretched man's hands the glowing spit. While his flesh was 
thus burning, the victim shouted out in agony, ' For the love of 
God kill me at once ! ' 

" Then the executioners, removing the red-hot spit from his hands, 
applied it to his breast, then to his back, his face, his feet, and other 
parts. After this, they forced open his mouth, and burned his tongue 
with red-hot pincers. During these inhuman operations, Azo fainted 
three several times, but on I'ecovering consciousness maintained the 
same inflexibility of purpose. Meanwhile, in the adjoining apart- 
ment, a heai-trending scene was being enacted. The women and the 
children, terrified by the groans and cries of the tortured man, fainted. 
When they revived, they endeavored to rush out to call for help, 
but the gendarmes, stationed at the door, barred their passage, and 
brutally pushed them back." 

This description by Dr. Dillon is taken literally from 
the report of the Vice-Consul of Erzrum, copies of which 
are open to public insi:)ection. The scene occurred in the 
village of Semal before the massacres, during the normal 
condition of things ! What must have been the case when 
the abnormal was reached ? 

By the year 1894 the transition from the policy of 
'^shameful misgovernment ^' to that of "frank extermina- 
tion " had been completed. That was the Turk's coming 
to complete consciousness of himself and his mission as a 
Power in Europe ! The regime of extortion and persecu- 
tion, in the attempt of the Turkish Grovernment to wring 
the last farthing from the Armenian, could only lead in 
the end to wholesale massacre. Barred by Islam from 
witnessing against a Mohammedan there was no redress 
to be had for the Christians. Deprived of the right to the 
possession of any weapons for self-defense, resistance with 
any poor weapons he might extemporize meant certain 
death. As the pressure of the tribute became greater the 
inability to pay increased. The property of the Armenians 
was thus, by the Sacred Law, forfeited, and the next step 
was its practical confiscation. When, driven to desperation, 
they ventured to resist the robbery and dishonor they were 



188 THE CRIME OP CHEISTBNDOM. 

struck or shot down like dogs. Tliey had forfeited the 
right to live. When four or five years of this Turkish 
tribute system had made wreck of all Christian prosperity 
and wealth on the Turkish Plateau the regime of cold- 
blooded massacre began. By the Sacred Law of the Koran 
— a state of things almost inconceivable to Western minds 
— massacre of the Christians was legal ! " And for three 
years the Turk has held high carnival, not only on the 
Plateau, but in the provinces on the coast, and in the very 
face of Christendom ! 

It was for a long time difficult to learn just the truth 
about the reported atrocities of the Turk and Kurd. 
Prom 1892 for three years no Consular Reports from Ar- 
menia were published by the British Government, which 
thus drew an official veil over the misdeeds of the Porte 
in that region. The missionary or other resi- 

Official Con- dents of the region could report the facts only 

cealment. at the peril of his life. Vigorous censorship 
shut out all reports through the press and the 
other usual channels of communication. The stories were 
too horrible to seem credible to the outside world. Slowly 
at length the veil began to be lifted and some of the 
facts were verified and reported ; but even now the only 
consciousness that Christendom has of it seems to be like 
that of a man in some horrid nightmare. The facts need 
to be pressed upon the attention again and again before the 
Christian world can be morally roused. Can they — being 
so incredible — ever be made to appear real? 

The facts of the period of "frank extermination" may 
be briefly outlined : First came the awful outbreak of 
Turkish butchery about Sassun in 189-J: ; then an ominous 
pause of a year or more ; then the more extended outbreak 
spread across the Plateau, taking in the centers of govern- 
ment and missionary effort, and reaching beyond to the 
coast at Trebizond and crossing to Constantinople ; then, 
after another pause of a year, the latest outbreak, sweep- 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 189 

ing Constantinople itself, the center of Turkish rule, as 
with the besom of destruction. 

(II.) Massacre at Sassun. 

Serious disturbances occurred in various parts of the 
country early in the year 1893. Turkish injustice and 
oppression drove the people to acts of revolt, 
and the Armenian Christian College at Marso- _ ^t^^^^v 
van was held by the authorities to be the great 
instigator of the disturbances. The truth of the matter 
was merely that, owing to evangelistic work conducted in 
Armenia, of which the college was the center, the people 
had naturally aspired to a higher degree of religious and 
educational freedom, and the uprisings of the oppressed 
people were made the excuse for throwing scores of inno- 
cent Christians into prison, and for closing the college, 
and burning a part of it. A number of those arrested were 
brought to trial at Angora in June, and seventeen, in- 
cluding two Protestant ministers and professors in the 
college, were sentenced to death upon false and forged evi- 
dence. Eepresentations were made to the Sultan by sev- 
eral of the Powers on behalf of the condemned men, and 
an agitation towards the same end was started in England. 
This had its effect on the 19th of July in the pardon of the 
two professors, who were sent into perpetual exile, and 
the reprieve of ten others, who were condemned to eight 
years' imprisonment. Five of the prisoners however were 
executed on August 1st. 

This is merely one illustration of the state of things ex- 
isting here and there over the Empire. A feature of the 
situation was the conflict carried on with the patriarch 
Monsignor Khrimian, leading to his resignation and at- 
tempted assassination, — all in the effort to make the Church 
subservient to the Porte. Disturbances occurred at vari- 
ous points and the condition of the country was evidently 
getting worse. On April 13th Mgr. Achikian, the patriarch, 



190 THE CEIME OF CHBISTENDOM. 

resigned his office, stating that the duties were too onerous 
for him. Monsignor Himayak, despite his unwillingness, 
was appointed as the locum tenens of the patriarchate on 
the 2d of September. 

It was just at this point that the Sassun horrors came 

in. After Dr. Dillon has shown that matters 

Climax Q^ ^]^g Armenian Plateau had long been 

xi63>CJ16(l 

advancing to a climax, he proceeds to 

say : ^ 

"The Turks, encouraged by the seventeen years' connivance of the 
only Power which possessed any formal right to intervene in favor 
of the Armenians, and confident that the British nation was a con- 
senting party to the policy of sheer extermination which was openly 
proclaimed again and again, organised a wholesale massacre of the 
Christians of Sassun. Tlie particular reason for this sweeping 
measure lay in the circumstance that the Armenian population in 
that part of the country consisted of the hardiest, bravest, and most 
resolute representatives of the race, and that their proportion to the 
Mohammedans there was more than twice greater than elsewhere. 
Tlie systematic Turkeries which had impoverished and depopulated 
the other less favoiu-ed districts were consequently of little avail in 
Sassun ; therefore, a purgative measure on a grandiose scale was 
carefully prepared for, a whole year before, by Imperial officials, whose 
service the Sultan has since nobly requited. 

" The preparations were elaborate and open. The project was 
known to and canvassed by all. A long report was addressed by the 
Abbot of Mush, Kharakhanian, to the British representative at Erz- 
rum, informing him of this inhuman plan, proving its real exist- 
ence and appealing to the people of England to save their Cliristian 
brethren. But international comity forbade us to meddle with the 
' domestic affairs of a friendly Power,' and the massacre took place as 
advertised. Momentary glimpses of the blood-curdling scenes, as de- 
scribed by Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian eye-witnesses, have since 
been vouchsafed us ; not by the Government, which pigeon-holed the 
report of its consuls, but by tlie Press. And in these dissolving views 
we behold long processions of misery-stricken men and women, bear- 
ing witness to the light invisible to them as they move onward to mid- 
night martyrdom amid the howls of their frantic torturers. The 
rivulets were choked up with corpses ; the streams ran red with 

1 Contemporary Eeview, January, 1896, pp. 12, 13. 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 191 

human blood ; the forest glades and rocky caves were peopled with 
the dead and dying ; among the black ruins of once prosperous vil- 
lages lay roasted infants by their mangled mothers' corpses ; pits 
were dug at night by the wretches destined to fill them, many of 
whom, flung in while but slightly wounded, awoke undei'neath a moun- 
tain of clammy corjises, and vainly wrestled with death and with the 
dead, who shut them out from light and life forever." 

Eev. Frederick Davis Greene, for several years a mis- 
sionary in Armenia, has given, in his valuable book, 
much detailed testimony regarding the mas- 
sacres of 1894. In his Explanantory Note statements' 
Mr. Greene summarizes his conclusions : 

" The evidence is cumulative and overwhelming. There is absolute 
unanimity to this extent : that a gigantic and indescribably horrible 
massacre of Armenian men, women and children did actually take 
place in the Sassun and neighboring regions about September 1, 1894, 
and that, too, at the hands of Kurdish troops armed by the Sultan of 
Turkey, as well as of regular soldiers sent imder orders from the same 
source. What those orders were will probably never transpire. That 
they were executed under the personal direction of high Turkish mili- 
tary officers is clear. There can also be no doubt — for the official 
notice from the palace was printed in the Constantinople papers in 
N^ovember last — that Zekki Pasha, Commander of the Fourth Army 
Corps, who led the regular troops in the work of extermination, has 
since been specially honored by a decoration from the Sultan, who 
was also pleased to send silk banners to the four leading Kurdish 
chiefs, by a special messenger." 

It seems that by the spring of 1894 the situation of the 
Christians had become intolerable, and the feeling was 
spreading among them that their hour was at hand. 
Everything seemed to foreshadow the hour of coming 
doom to the Christians of the Plateau. As the summer 
came on the pressure of exaction and extortion increased. 
Rumors of insurrection were raised and sent abroad by 
the Turkish authorities and every effort made to goad on 

1 The Armenian Crisis in Turkey, p. 7. Attention is called to the 
book as containing an important collection of facts and evidence 
bearing upon the massacre and upon the Armenian Question and its 
solutloo. 



192 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

the Christians to resistance and rebellion. Troops were 
massed in the vicinity, the Kurdish Hamidieh were brought 
in, and a military cordon formed around the hilly region, 
so that no helper or observer should enter from the out- 
side, and no cry of agony from this natural dungeon, 
made tenfold darker by Turkish art, reach the world 
beyond. In August the Turk gave the word, and one of 
the most dreadful of even Turkish butcheries followed, 
covering a period of several weeks. 

It was weeks before the rumors of the massacre began 

to find their way through the military cordon. More than 

a month had elapsed before the English Vice- 

The Slow Consul at Van received the information that 

Transpiring. 

led him to hasten to Sassun to ascertain the 
exact facts. In the meantime the Government had done 
everything possible to cover up the facts, and had prepared 
and forced the Armenians to sign, and had then sent out, 
documents disclaiming any sympathy with those who had 
been slain and expressing " regret that it had been thought 
best to send consuls to investigate, and stating that there 
was no need of their coming ! " It became evident to Mr. 
Hallward that probably nearly ten thousand of the Ar- 
menians had been slaughtered ; although he was subjected 
to the most exasperating espionage, and prevented 
from penetrating into the region that had been laid 
waste. 

It was more than a month later before definite state- 
ment compiled secretly by representative men found its 
way out to the Armenian centers on the Plateau and to 
the outside world. It seems that 20,000 Kurds and many 
of the Hamidieh had been massed at Mush. The Turkish 
authorities set these to attack the Christians in the villages 
around Sassun, keeping the regular troops out of sight. 
The villagers repulsed these attacks. The regular troops 
then assumed the Kurdish dress and led them to successful 
attack. Some of them quartered themselves in certain 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 193 

villages professedly to '• protect" the Christians;, and then 
arose in the night and exterminated the sleeping inhab- 
itants. In desperation the Armenians attempted to save 
themselves from extermination. We quote 
the following paragraphs from this early state- ■^- ^^^^^^ ^ 
ment^ as given by Mr. Greene.-^ 

" Arnl then began a 'campaign of butchery that lasted some twenty- 
three clays, or, roughly, from the middle of August to the middle of 
September. The Ferik Pasha (Marshal Zekki Pasha), who came 
post-haste from Erzingan, read the Sultan's firman for extermination, 
and then, hanging the document on his breast, exhorted the soldiers 
not to be found wanting in their duty. On the last day of August, 
the anniversary of the Sultan's accession, the soldiers were especially 
urged to distinguish themselves, and they made it the day of the 
greatest slaughter. Another marked day occurred a few days earlier, 
being marked by the occurrence of a wonderful meteor. 

"No distinctions were made between persons or villages, as to 
whether they were loyal and had paid their taxes or not. The orders 
were to make a clean sweep. A priest and some leading men from 
one village went out to meet an officer, taking in their hands their 
tax receipts, declaring their loyalty and begging for mercy ; but the 
village was surrounded, and all human beings put to the bayonet. 
A large and strong man, the chief of one village, was captured by the 
Kurds, who tied him, threw him on the ground, and, squatting around 
him, stabbed him to pieces. 

"At Galogozan many young men were tied hand and foot, laid in 
a row, covered with brushwood and burned alive. Others were seized 
and hacked to death piecemeal. At another village a priest and 
several leading men were captured, and promised release if they would 
tell where others had fled, but, after telling, all but the priest were 
killed. A chain was put around the priest's neck, and pulled from 
opposite sides till he was several times choked and revived, after 
which several bayonets were planted upright, and he raised in the air 
and let fall upon them. 

"The men of one village, when fleeing, took the women and chil- 
dren, some five hundred in number, and placed them in a sort of 
grotto ijl a ravine. After several days the soldiers found them, and 
butchered those who had not died of hunger. 

" Sixty young women and girls were selected from one village and 

iThe Armenian Crisis in Turkey, pp. 21-23. 
^3 



194 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. ' 

placed in a clmrcli, when the soldiers were ordered to do with them 
as they liked, after which they were butchered. 

"In another village fifty choice women were set aside and urged 
to change their faith and become hanums in Turkish harems, but 
they indignantly refused to deny Christ, preferring the fate of then- 
fathers and husbands. People were crowded into houses which were 
then set on fire. In one instance a little boy ran out of the flames, 
but was caught on a bayonet and thrown back. 

" Children were frequently held up by the hair and cut in two, or 
had their jaws torn apart. Women with child were ripped open ; 
older children were pulled apart by tlieir legs. A handsome, newly 
married couple fled to a hilltop ; soldiers followed, and told them 
they were pretty and would be spared if they would accept Islam, but 
the thought of the horrible death they knew would follow did not 
prevent them from confessing Christ. 

" The last stand took place in Mount Andoke (south of Mush), 
where some thousand persons had sought refuge. The Kurds were 
sent in relays to attack them, but for ten or fifteen days were unable 
to get at them. The soldiers also directed the fire of their mountain 
guns on them, doing some execution. Finally, after the besieged 
had been without food for several days, and their ammunition was 
exhausted, the troops succeeded in reaching the summit, without 
any loss, and let scarcely a man escape. 

" Now all turned their attention to those who had been driven into 
the Talvoregg district. Three or four thousand of the besieged were 
left in this small plain. When they saw themselves thickly sur- 
rounded on all sides by Turks and Kurds, they raised their hands to 
heaven with an agonizing moan for deliverance. They were thinned 
out by rifle shots, and the remainder were slaughtered with bayonets 
and swords, till a veritable river of blood flowed from the heaps of 
the slain." 

So ended tlie Sassun massacre. How many perished 
only tlie judgment day can reveal. Whether 10,000 or 
25,000 — the lowest and highest estimates — matters com- 
paratively little. Great Britain had made herself chiefly 
responsible for it ! But that does not lift the immense 
weight of guilt and condemnation from the other PoAvers 
that looked on and did nothing to hinder the butchery. 
Nor does it exonerate the Great Assassin ; although his 
guilt may well seem less black when matched with the un- 
speakable guilt of so-called Christian Europe ! 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 195 

(III.) Subsequent Events and the Game of Eefoem. 

Early in December (1894) the London Times published 
an important article confirming the rumors as to the mas- 
sacres in the Sassun district. It reported that the un- 
happy sufferers were peasants who paid tribute to the local 
Kurdish Beys in return for their protection. Ottoman 
officials tried to levy further taxes upon them, but were 
repulsed by the Armenians and their Kurdish protectors 
combined. The authorities represented this at Constanti- 
nople as a serious insurrection, and accordingly Zekki 
Pasha, the Mushir commanding at Erzingan, went to Sas- 
sun with a force of regulars and committed barbarities 
and atrocities of a revolting character. 

The Porte consented to the presence of the British and 

Kussian consuls at Erzrum on the Commission of Inquiry 

into the alleged outrages, December 14, 1894. 

Mr. H. S. Shipley and Count Proievalsky C°^™i°^ °f 

. J Inquiry, 

were afterwards appointed as the delegates. 

On December 19, Mgr. Izmirlian was elected patriarch of 
Armenia. Chefik Bey and Djelaled Din Bey were substi- 
tuted for Abdullah Pasha on the Commission on December 
23, 1894. Mgr. Izmirlian was enthroned in the cathedral 
at Koum Kapu, Constantinople, January 10, 1895, before 
an enormous congregation of Armenians. He announced 
his intention to send a special delegate to investigate the 
Sassun affair, January 23. The London Times tried to 
adopt the same plan, but the Turkish authorities withheld 
the necessary permit January 25. At a preliminary sitting 
of the Commission at Mush, January 27, Thasin Pasha, 
the Vali of Bitlis, was suspended pending the course of the 
inquiry. During February and March, from various 
sources, includiug special correspondents, who had suc- 
ceeded in making their way to the scenes of the outrages, 
confirmatory evidence of the truth of the charges was ac- 
cumulated. The release of several Armenian ecclesiastics 



196 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

imprisoned for political offences was ordered by tlie Sultan, 
March 21. On March 20 a conflict between Mohammedans 
and Armenian Christians took place at Tokat — recently, 
in 1897, the scene of the massacre of 2,000 Christians — 
and five persons were killed and fifty wounded. 

After exhaustive inquiries, the European members of 
the Commission of Inquiry were convinced of the awful 
nature of the atrocities that had been corn- 
Scheme of jQi^;^ed ; and on their report having been 
made, a Memorandum with a Scheme of Ee- 
forms was presented to the Sultan jointly by the British, 
French and Eussian Ambassadors, May 11. 

The Memorandum indicated certain measures, the adop- 
tion of which was urged upon the Porte as of primary 
importance. The measures were as follows : 

1. The eventual reduction of the number of Vilayets. 

2. The guarantees for the selection of such Valis as the Powers 
should approve. 

3. Amnesty for Armenians sentenced or in prison on political 
charges. 

4. The return of the Armenian emigrants or exiles and the restora- 
tion of their property. 

5. The settlement without delay of pending legal proceedings for 
common-law crimes and offences. 

6. The inspection of the prisons and an inquiry into the condition 
of the prisoners. 

7. The appointment of a High Commissioner of Surveillance for the 
application of tlie Scheme of Reforms in the Provinces. 

8. The creation of a permanent Committee of control at Constan- 
tinople, three being Christians, and three Mohammedans, charged 
with the superintendence of the reforms. 

9. Reparation for the loss suffered by the Armenians who were 
victims of the events at Sassun, Talori, etc. 

10. The regulation of matters connected with religious conversions. 

11. The maintenance and strict application of the rights and privi- 
leges conceded to the Armenians. 

12. The position of the Armenians in the other Vilayets of Asiatic 
Turkey. 

The Scheme of Eeforms insisted that the Valis, or goy- 



THE ARMENIAN CllISIS AND MASSACRES. 197 

ernors, should be chosen from uniong the high dignitaries 
of the >Sttite and be aj)pointed for live years, witli Moavins, 
or deputies, to assist tliem, also appointed by the Sultan. 
When the Vali was a Christian the Moavin should be a 
Mohammedan, and vice versa. A provincial Council Cen- 
eral should be elected to assist each Vali, The mutessarifs 
administering the sandjaks, and the kaimakams adminis- 
tering the cazas, should also be appointed by the Sultan, 
with similar provisions for ensuring religious justice, and 
each should be assisted by councils, the council of the caza 
being elected by the council of the nahies, or communal 
circles composing it, and the council of the sandjak by 
the councils of its constituent cazas. The councils of the 
sandjaks should in turn elect the provincial Council Gen- 
eral. The regulation for the nahies, or communal circles 
(that is, groups of villages of not less than 200 nor more 
than 10,000 inhabitants, so arranged as to group villages of 
one religion together), were that they should be adminis- 
tered by paid mudirs and an elected council of from four 
to eight members, the council choosing the mudir for the 
term of two years. It was provided that no imam priest, 
school professor, or person in the Government service could 
be mudir ; the police of each nahie should be recruited 
from its own population, and be governed by the mudir. 
Two-thirds of the gendarmerie should be taken from these 
police, half Mohammedans and half non-Mohammedans, 
and the remaining third from the regular army. 

Other points in the scheme were the provisions for im- 
mediate trial of arrested persons, for the proper control of 
nomad Kurds by an official apjDointed by the Vali for that 
purpose, and for the levying of taxes, including tithes, 
under the authority of the mudirs. 

The farming of the tithes and the corvee was abolished. 
Strict provisions as to the administration of justice were 
drawn up, and it Avas laid down that one-third of the justices 
in each caza should be Christians. Appeals frorn the ju§- 



198 THE CRIME OF CHKISTENDOM. 

tices in otlier than minor cases should be taken before 
the courts of the sandjaks. Criminal cases should be tried 
by courts of assize on circuit, consisting of a presiding 
magistrate and a Christian and a Mohammedan justice of 
the peace. Above all should be the Superior Court of the 
Vilayet, acting in civil matters as a Court of Appeal and 
in criminal matters as an Assize Court. It was a perfect 
Utopia — on paper ! 

The Memorandum and Scheme were dubiously received 
by the Porte, and though they were accepted in principle 
the acceptance was very vague, and the dis- 
Conduct of tlie g^^ggion of many points was demanded. Ef- 
forts to discover what these points were proved 
fruitless ; but the determined attitude of the Powers had 
the eifect of securing the appointment on June 27 of 
Shakir Pasha, first aide-de-camp to the Sultan, as Imperial 
Commissioner for carrying out reforms in Armenia. A 
Commission was also appointed by the Sultan to prepare 
an independent scheme of reforms. This was intended, 
of course, to render abortive the Scheme of the Powers, 
already outlined. 

The amnesty of all Armenian political prisoners in Con- 
stantinople and the other provinces was also granted, July 
24. The dismissal of the Valis of Van and Mosul was 
obtained on August 6. On the 21st the Powers through 
their ambassadors presented a Collective Note urging the 
acceptance of the proposals made by them. The Sultan 
then appealed to France and Russia against the pressing 
attitude of Great Britain, but in vain. 

Shakir Pasha left Constantinople on August 27 to assume 
his new duties in Armenia, and on September 7 the Porte 
announced the various concessions it was willing to make to 
the demands of the Powers ; but as the appointment of 
Christian valis and mutessarifs was refused, the concessions 
were of little value. Had not the Crimean "War made the 
Turk one of the acknowledged and accredited Powers of 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 199 

Europe ? Had not the Treaty of Berlin confirmed him in 
that position ? Had not Great Britain promised for the 
bribe of Cyprus to defend him in it ? It was because of 
their own iniquity that the Turk had been able to balk 
the Christian Powers in all their efforts. 

II. Second Year of Butchery, 1895. 

The atrocities of 1894 were but preliminary to the greater 
horrors that were to follow. The futility of the efforts of 
the Powers had confirmed the contempt of the Sultan for 
them and for their proposals, and his sense of freedom 
and impunity in his diabolical work. The oppression and 
extortion were continued with redoubled energy, and as the 
financial pressure reached its climax the condition of the 
Armenians was made more desperate than ever. 

While negotiations Avere in progress the Armenians in 
Constantinople had met at the Koum Kapu Cathedral and 
presented a petition to the Patriarch, declaring that the 
position of Armenia under Turkish rule was intolerable. 
Against the Patriarch's advice an attempt to march in pro- 
cession to the Porte was made, September 30, and fatal con- 
flicts ensued in which about 200 Armenians were slain. 
Hundreds were imprisoned, and panic prevailed in the city 
of Constantinople for several days. The Armenians took 
refuge in the churches, but on the interposition of the 
ambassadors of the Powers returned home. But the re- 
volting massacre that occurred at Trebizond, October 8, 
in which the number killed was 800, helped to pre- 
cipitate the crisis that the Powers vainly thought they had 
averted. 

This desperate condition of affairs — with the prospect of 
such outbreaks over the whole Empire — led the Great 
Powers to devote themselves more earnestly to their old dip- 
lomatic game of blind man's buff. The ambassadors of 
Great Britain, France, and Russia sent Identical Com- 
mmiicatioias to their governments specifying the points in 



200 THE CRIME OF CHKISTENDOM. 

the Scheme of Eef orm which they considered as absolutely 
essential. Meanwhile, in view of the gravity of the situa- 
tion the British fleet arrived at Lemnos, and remained 
there in spite of repeated requests from the Sultan for its 
withdrawal. 

In a fit of feigned alarm on October 17 the Sultan issued 
an Imperial Irade declaring his acceptance of the revised 
Scheme of Reform presented by the three Powers. This 
Scheme ordained that in each Vilayet a non- 
Imperial Mohammedan Moavin should be appointed. 
A non-Mohammedan Moavin should also be 
attached to every Mohammedan mutessarif and kaimakam 
in those sandjaks and cazas where the importance of the 
Christian population Justified such a measure. It- was 
provided that the proportion of the Mohammedan and 
non-Mohammedan inhabitants of each Vilayet should reg- 
ulate the number of Christians and Mohammedans ap- 
pointed to public offices. Provision was also made for re- 
forming the councils of the sandjaks, cazas and nahies, for 
the inspection of the prisons by judicial inspectors, for a 
mixed police and gendarmerie recruited from the Moham- 
medan and Christian subjects in proportion to the re- 
ligions of the inhabitants of each Vilayet, for the control 
and settlement of the Kurds, the regulation of the Hami- 
dieh cavalry, and for the collection of taxes by the sole 
agency of the mukhtars and tax-gatherers elected by the 
inhabitants. It was further ordained that a Permanent 
Commission of Control should be established at Constanti- 
nople, consisting of an equal number of Mohammedans and 
Christians, and the Embassies were given access to this 
Commission. Shefik Effendi was appointed President of 
the Commission, November 3, the other members being 
Djemal Bey, Manager of the Bank of Agriculture ; Karath- 
eodory Efiendi and Abdullah Bey, Councilors of State ; 
Johannes Effendi, Procureur of the Imperial Court of 
Accounts ; Djelal Bey, President of the Offences Court 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 201 

in the Court of Appeal ; and Dilber Eifendi, legal Coun- 
cilor to the Ministry of Finance. 

And so the work of reforming was all done — on paper 
— once more and satisfactorily, for the twentieth time, and 
the Powers of Christendom congratulated themselves as 
usual, and the Turk laughed in his sleeve as usual ! 

The Trade seemed to be merely an expedient to distract 
the attention of Christendom while the Turk should carry 
on his work of rapine and butchery un- 
hindered under its shadow. When the Turk The Shadow- 
has cried, "^ Peace! Peace !^' it has always 
meant a sword for the defenseless and helpless. No reform 
came of the pretense and profession in this case. The 
exigencies of the Sublime Porte were extraordinary. A 
year had passed since the levying of the last " taxes." 
The government was practically bankrupt. Its soldiers 
and servants, its agents and hired butchers, had long been 
unpaid. The Christian bondholders were clamoring for 
the interest upon their bonds. The fear of coercion had 
passed away. And so under cover of the Irade the orders 
went out from the palace in Constantinople to let loose 
the wild Kurds and the Hamidieh and the regular Turkish 
soldiery, upon the Armenians over the Turkish belt of the 
Armenian Plateau, with the purpose of confiscating the 
property still in their hands, and of exterminating them 
if necessary to raise the requisite money and to crush out 
the spirit of freedom. . It will be seen on examination 
that the butcheries covered the entire region, from Lake 
Van and Ararat to Asia Minor. It will appear that this 
time little effort was made to conceal the horrible work, 
such as had been made in 1894. 

As already said, the Imperial Irade accepting the schedule 
of reforms proposed by the three Powers was promul- 
gated October 17. Previously to that there had been 
several sporadic outbreaks besides those at Constantinople 
and Trebizond, that tended to increase the excitement and 



202 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

hasten the action of the Porte. Among these was that at 
Ak Hissar^ to the JSTortheast of Smyrna in Asia Minor, in 
which 45 Armenians are reported to have perished, and that 
at Baibnrt in which 1,000 perished. But it was not till 
the promulgation of the Irade that the orders were sent 
out from Stamboul and the reign of terror at the centers 
of Armenian population began. It is only possible to give 
some typical instances of what took place wherever the 
Armenians were an important factor in the community, and 
wherever the region was practically beyond the reach of 
foreign interference. 

(I.) The Bloody October of 1895. 

■ Four days after the Irade was issued there burst upon 
Armenia the cyclone of robbery and rapine that in the last 
ten days of October swept across the Plateau, from Erzin- 
gan in Erzrum to Urfa on the borders of Aleppo, and 
from Kara Hissar in Sivas to Bitlis and Lake Van. 

The starting-point seems to have been Erzingan, a city 
of from 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, the center of Turk- 
ish military power just over the borders of 

Massacre Trebizond, on the Western Euphrates. From 
Organized. ' ^ 

such a military stronghold of Turkish despot- 
ism it was not easy for the facts to reach the outside world ; 
but, on that opening day, October 21, not less than 1,000 
of the Armenian Christians were butchered like so many 
helpless sheep in the shambles. The rapidity and regularity 
with which the tide of massacre swept over the Plateau 
from this center seem to indicate that the official order 
was sent out and the work superintended from Erzingan. 
On October 25, four days after the beginning there made, 
blows fell simultaneously at Kara Hissar, in the terrace-land 
northwest of Erzingan tov/ard the Black Sea, and at three 
points across Kurdisdan, — at Bitlis, near Lake Van ; at 
Diarbekr, in the center, at the head-waters of the Tigris ; and 
at Albistan, on the west, toward the Bimbogia Dagh range. 



THE ARMENIAN CHISIS AND MASSACRES. 203 

At Kara Hissar, in the vilayet of Sivas, 500 Armenians 
perished, with tlie usual accompaniments of Turkish butch- 
eries. For this the Turk alone was responsible, as it was 
far beyond the range of Kurdish influence, and within easy 
reach of both Trebizond and Erzingan. On the same date 
900 are reported as having perished at Bitlis, a city of from 
13,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. This was within easy reach 
of the Kurds and the Ilamidieh, and had 

been in the very center of the operations Across the 

Plateau 

against Sassun in 1894. It was almost as 
easy to suppress the details of the brutal work as it had 
been in the case of Sassun. At Diarbekr, a city of 50,000 
inhabitants, the tale of the butchery reached 2,500. It 
was renewed in the opening days of November, by the 
Moslems, who issued from a mosque and burned the market- 
place. The Christians attempted to defend themselves, but 
were practically helpless with the mass of Turks and Kurds 
wielded by the government against them. The details 
were largely kept from the ears of far-off Europeans. At 
Albistan, in Western Kurdistan, in the outbreak of the 
same day, 300 Armenians perished. On the same fateful 
October 25, there fell 450 Armenians at Palu, east of Khar- 
put, in the beginning of the massacres that culminated in 
ISTovember. The closing days of October were signalized 
by the opening of the work of massacre in various other 
quarters, some of them far beyond the bounds of the 
Plateau. 

The destruction of the Christians at TJrfa and Birijik, 
in Aleppo, beyond the range of the Hamidieh, illustrates the 
method of the Turkish soldiery in protecting ( ?) the Arme- 
nians. The work was begun on October 27, and the 
Turkish strategy culminated in full destruction more than 
two months later, on the last days of December and on 
New Year's day, 1896. The following authentic accounts 
were sent out early in 189G ; or as soon as detailed informa- 
tion could be obtained. 



204 THE Crime oe Christendom. 

The work of massacre at Urfa in the province of Aleppo 
was begun October 27. Urfa, the modern city, is on the 
site of the ancient Ur of the days of Abraham, 
and, of the later days, of Edessa in which 
the Apostle Thaddeus is said to have preached the Gospel 
to King Abgar and to have laid the foundation of the 
Armenian Church. It has a notable place in the history 
of the Church. There in the fourth century lived in a 
cave the celebrated ecclesiastic and scholar, Ephraim the 
Syrian, and wrote his hymns and commentaries, of which six 
volumes are extant. For many years it was the center of 
Oriental learning. Baldwin, the crusader, afterward king 
of Jerusalem, became Count of Edessa in 109G, and made 
it the capital of a Latin principality. About 1144 it 
was captured by the Saracen chief Noor-ed-Din, who mas- 
sacred its Christian inhabitants. Afterward it was succes- 
sively harried by Byzantines, Mongols, Persians and Turks, 
The modern town of Urfa, with its 30,000 inhabitants, is in 
the main fanatically Moslem. It is one of the centers of 
the Jacobite Christians, who hold the Monophysite doctrine 
of the unity of the divine and human natures in Christ. 

The American missionaries had made Urfa a point of 
effort. Miss Shattuck, the only American tnissionary on 
the ground, remained at her post, in spite of the attempts 
of the missionaries at Anital to induce her to flee to that 
city. It will be seen that in the dreadful butchery of the 
closing days of December her presence, and the regard for 
the American Government under whose protection she 
was, were all that stood between the Protestant Com- 
munity and annihilation. 

On October 27 the Moslem population entered upon 
their work of destruction. They plundered 6'00 shops 
and 289 houses of the Armenians, secured about $000,000 
worth of goods, and butchered about 40 Christians at this 
time. The Turkish Government made this the signal for 
completely disarming all the Christians, and for arresting 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 205 

and imprisoning about 80 of the principal Armenians. 
For two months there was a reign of terror^ the Mos- 
lems being eager for blood and plunder and the Christians 
in hourly expectation of a renewed outbreak. 

The occasion of that outbreak came in December when 
the Armenians of Zeitun, not far away^, began their heroic 
defense in that mountain fortress. Some of the particulars 
of the dreadful tragedy were sent out from Urfa, by Miss 
Shattuck, the American missionary, January 7, 1896. 

The massacre at Urfa on October 27 was made the pre- 
text for preparing for that at Birijik, a town but a short 
distance from Urfa. The following account, 
sent from Constantinople to the Armenian 
Kelief Association, some time after the opening of 1896, 
gives a clear view of the Turkish policy and methods : 

" Birijik, which is situated on the Euphrates, in the province of 
Aleppo, had about three hundred Christian houses, or about one 
thousand souls, in the midst of a Mussulman population of about nine 
thousand. After the massacre at Urfa, on October 27, 1895, the 
authorities at Birijik told the Armenians that the Moslems were afraid 
of them, and that therefore they (the Armenians) must surrender to 
the Government any arms that they possessed. This was done, the 
most rigid search being instituted to assure the authorities that 
nothing whatever in the way of arms remained in the hands of the 
Armenians. 

"Troops were called out by the Government to 'protect' the 
people. Since the soldiers had come to ' protect ' the Christians, 
the Christians were required to furnish animals for them to carry 
their goods. Then they were required to furnish them beds and 
carpets to make them more comfortable. Finally they were required 
to furnish the soldiers with food, and they were reduced to a state 
bordering on destitution by these increasing demands. 

" The end came on January 1, 1896, when the news of the massacre 
of several thousands of Christians at Urfa by the soldiers appointed 
to guard them incited the troops at Birijik to imitate this crime. The 
assault on the Christian houses began at about 9 o'clock in the 
morning, and continued until nightfall. The soldiers were aided by 
the Moslems of the city in the terrible work. The object at first 
seemed to be mainly plunder, but after the plunder had been secured 
the soldiers seemed to make a systematic search for men, to kill those 



206 THE CEIME OP CHIIISTEKDOM. 

who were unwilling to accept Maliometanism. The cruelty used to 
force men to become Moslems was terrible. In one case the soldiers 
found some twenty people — men, women and children — who had 
taken refuge in a sort of cave. They dragged them out and killed 
all the men and boys. After cutting down one old man, they put live 
coals upon his body, and as he was writhing in torture they held a 
Bible before him and asked him mockingly to read them some of the 
promises in which he had trusted. Others were thrown into the river 
while still alive, after having been cruelly wounded. The women and 
children of this party wore loaded up like goods upon the backs 
of porters, and carried off to the houses of the Moslems. 

" Every Christian house except two, alleged to be owned by Turks, 
was plundered. Ninety-six men are known to have been killed, or 
about half of the adult Christian men. The others have become 
Mussulmans to save their lives, so that there is not a single avowed 
Christian left in Birijik to-day. The Armenian Church has been 
made into a mosque, and the Protestant Church into a Medresse 
seminary." 

The month of October closed with the massacre at Erz- 
rum, about eighty miles southeast of Baiburt. This city 
with its 40,000 inhabitants, three-fourths of 
whom are Moslem, stands at the point on the 
great Plateau at which the head-waters of the "West Euphra- 
tes, the Araxes and the Cheruk rivers part to make their 
way, the first to the Persian Gulf, the second to the Caspian, 
and the third to the Black Sea. At an elevation of 6,000 
feet above the sea, it is the gateway to Transcaucasia, 
Eastern Turkey, Asia Minor, and the Levant, or to the 
four seas that are watered by the streams that take their 
rise in the Armenian Plateau. Being so situated, and the 
seat of the governor-general of the province of the same 
name, it has been for centuries the leading city of Eastern 
Turkey, Its extensive trade had made the Armenian 
fourth of the population wealthy and influential, while 
the fact that Erzingan had been the military center had 
given the Armenians an unusual measure of freedom and a 
feeling of security. The presence of the Consuls of the 
Great Powers added to the sense of security. It would be 
considered a natural center for the operations of the 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 207 

Huntcliakists, tlie league laboring for Armenian freedom, 
although, they seem really to have been able to exert only 
the slightest influence. But the ferocity rekindled among 
the Turkish soldiers by their successful atrocities in Tre- 
bizond overswept all bounds as they moved southward to 
Erzrum. According to the Rev. E. M. Bliss, from whose 
account of this reign of horror ^ a few facts are here grouped, 
the Armenian community in Erzrum regarded the city 
as a place peculiarly their own, and, but for the general 
conservatism of the Armenian character, might have pre- 
cipitated a conflict with the Moslems. For some days 
before the arrival of the massacreing host from Trebizond, 
the Turks had been threatening to kill the Christians, but 
such threats had become so frequent, and the police patrol 
was so strong, every means being apparently used to pre- 
serve peace, that the Armenians gave little heed to them. 
From this feeling of security some of them were suddenly 
aroused while wholly unprejaared on the afternoon of 
October 30, when a mob of resident Turks, including many 
soldiers, began firing right and left into houses near the 
market. The attack was simultaneous in different parts 
of the city inhabited by Armenians. Wherever an Arme- 
nian appeared, he was shot at or cut down. Doors were 
broken open and the contents of houses carried off, all that 
could not be carried off being destroyed. Thus pepper and 
pickles were mixed with flour that could not be removed 
and bread was trampled in the dust. Turkish women 
aided the soldiers in this work of pillage. Commanding 
officers themselves looted houses. The violence continued 
on Thursday. In one house Mr. Chambers, the resident 
American missionary, saw two young brides brutally mur- 
dered lying disfigured and almost naked. In nearly every 
case where Armenians fled to the guard-houses for pro- 
tection, they were first robbed and then shot down ; 
sometimes they were shot dovt^n in groups. Wounds were 
1 Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities. Philadelphia-, Pa., lS96i 



208 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

inflicted on the Armenians with fiendish cruelty. One man 
had three gashes on his head, two dagger wounds in his 
back, a bullet through his left hand, and coal-oil had been 
poured on him preparatory to burning. One Turkish 
soldier was heard to declare that in four hours he had 
used ten packages of ammunition, each package containing 
twelve rounds, making in all 120 rounds shot away by one 
man in that short time. The scenes on Friday, the Moslem 
Sunday, are described as most horrible. Some estimates 
have put the number of killed in this onslaught at 2,000. 
It is notable that not a single dead Turk was reported or 
seen. 

The following extract from a letter written at Erzrum, 
early in November, to Eev. Frederick D. Greene, shows 
how completely the Armenians were surprised, and how 
dreadful was the catastrophe : ^ 

" The entire Erzruin province has been deluged in Christian 
blood, and the bulk of Christian property plundered or destroyed. 
The Scheme of Reform has now become an impossibility. The only 
hope of this land is foreign occupation. Appeal for relief funds. 
The remnant of the people are left in utter destitution. They can 
not get out of the country. Two cents a day will give a man about 
a pound and a half of bread. For the love of God do all you can to 
get relief for these wretched people ! 

"The scene in the cemetery was awful. The remains are simply 
the wrecks of human bodies. Awful cruelty was practised. . . . Some 
were skinned, some burned with kerosene. A great many women 
are missing. Yery many of the dead have been disposed of by the 
Turks themselves. There must have been a thousand killed. About 
seven hundred houses and fifteen hundred shops were plundered of 
all that was in them. . . . 

"The Armenians had shown a great amount of patience. lam 
perfectly sure that they had no thought of attack, much less any prep- 
aration for it. The attack was made by Moslems after leaving the 
mosques, after the noon hour of prayer. . . . The Armenians were 
in their places of business, which were simply death-traps. For 
Instance, the silversmith's row was cut off at either end and not a 

1 The Rule of the Turk, and the Armenian Crisis. By Frederick 
T). Greene, M. A. Putnam Brothers, New York. 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 209 

man escaped, and the shops were not only plundered but wrecked. 
In fact, the most violent Armenians, i. e., the Huntchakists, had de- 
termined to keep perfectly quiet till the Scheme of Reform was well 
tried. The soldiers declare that they had been instructed beforehand. 
The Turks were expecting it for a long time, and evidently the orders 
were given from Constantinople. The massacre was almost entirely 
in the hands of the military. It began aiid ended with the bugle." 

And so the month of October, 1895, closed, with from 
five thousand to ten tliousand dead added to the long list 
of Christian martyrs in Armenia ! 

Mr. Bliss remarks of the Erzrum massacres : " That in 

such a city, in the very presence of English, French and 

Eussian consuls, with high dignitaries of the 

Turkish Government in command, such scenes _ *^ 

' Suppressed. 

should occur was in itself a matter of great 
moment." In its issue of December 7, 1895, the London 
Spectator called attention to the fact that the Powers 
officially kept the facts from Christendom, in order to pre- 
vent the tide of moral indignation that must have resulted 
in Europe from their disclosure : 

" It should be carefully noted by all who are studying the Turkish 
question, that from first to last no Government has published any 
Consular statement about the massacres, yet consuls of several 
nations must have watched them. There is grave reason to believe 
that these reports are kept back because those who receive them are 
aware that if published the boiling indignation of Europe would 
force the hands of statesmen who wish to wait. The Consul at 
Erzrum, for example, was in the very middle of the massacre, risk- 
ing his life over and over again in the discharge of his duty, and 
his report must be in the hands of the foreign office." 

(II.) The Bloody November oe 1895. 

Terrible as were the preceding acts of violence, the 

Sultan, now feeling assured of immunity from restraint 

by any authority whatsoever, planned and 

incited still more cruel devastation, and the ^.^ssacres 

' Si^aled, 

very flood-gates of crime were raised. All the 

circumstantial evidence goes to prove clearly that thes§ 
14 



210 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

outbreaks, wliile apparently sudden, were carefully directed 
in every particular. Take, for example, the outbreak at 
At Siva Sivas, a city of 27,000 inhabitants and capitol 
of the eyalet of Sivas. According to a trust- 
worthy letter,^ it appears that suddenly at noon, on No- 
vember 12th, as if at a given signal, the Turkish laborers 
seized their tools, clubs or whatever was at hand ; that 
the soldiers, the Circassians, and the police simultaneously 
armed themselves — all under the command of officers — and 
rushed to the market, where the work of killing, stripping 
the dead, and robbing houses, which was permitted to con- 
tinue for seven days, was begun. During this week about 
1,200 Armenians were slain, only ten Turks being killed. 
Thus at one blow the Armenian element was eliminated 
from the trade of Sivas. As usual, no resistance was made 
by the Armenians, the remnant of whom slowly gathered 
the mangled bodies of their kinsmen to their cemetery, 
where a great trench had been dug for garnering the 
harvest of death. 

Due regard for the feelings of the reader is kept in view 
in presenting this and other chapters of horror. Indeed 
eye-witnesses of the scenes have found it necessary to omit 
the most cruel details — stories of the inhuman lust of which 
hundreds of helpless Christian women were made victims. 
In this November storm of crime, the district of Khar- 
put was the vortex. Here 15,000 Christians were slaught- 
ered. The city of Kharput stands on an 
Kharput the elevation in a plain east of the Euphrates. 

V OjtXvX. • • i ■ 1 • 

At this time it had 30,000 inhabitants, some- 
thing less than one half being Armenians. The plain 
about the city of Kharput is fertile, and the villages that 
dotted this plain were noted for their prosperity. The 
city has for a long time been the center of mission work, 
and here are situated quite widely-known educational insti- 

1 The Rule of the Turk, and the jirmenijiii Crisis. By Fredencl? 
J), Greene, M. A, 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 211 

tutions, tliat have been liberally patronized by the better 
Armenian element throughout that part of the Empire. 
The missionaries had always been on terms of peace and 
courtesy with the Turkish officials, and it was felt that 
in this place there was little or no danger of disturbance. 
But the eye of the great vulture had marked the city for 
prey, and on the 11th of November it was approached by 
an attack on Husenik, a near-by village, where 200 Chris- 
tians were killed and several hundred wounded. When the 
city of Kharput was reached about 100 were killed, the 
chief devastation being by fire, that was savagely applied 
to schools and churches as well as to private houses, and 
such were the menaces that the frantic stampede of Chris- 
tians followed. The cordon of towns and villages about 
Kharput then began to blaze and run with blood. In only 
two places, Arabkir and Malatia, did the Armenians try to 
defend themselves, and for this they suffered accordingly. 
Those killed in Arabkir, according to estimates made soon 
after the massacre, numbered 2,000 ; at Malatia, 5,000 ; 
about 500 Turks fell. In Malatia, the Armenians, Crego- 
rians, Eoman Catholics and Protestants took refuge in 
two churches and defended themselves until compelled 
to surrender, which they did on condition of being pro- 
tected ; but after the surrender many of them were 
killed. 

The following brief statement in regard to the mas- 
sacres in the Kharput region were furnished by the New 
York Independent of January 23, 1896, the facts being 
claimed to come from a trustworthy source. Only a part 
of the summary is here reproduced : 

' ' At Adisli, a village from whicli tlie greater part of the men had 
gone away to earn a living, many females were carried off ; 244 men 
and 13 women were killed. Aivose was ' wiped out ' ; women and 
girls were carried off. A priest was forced to sound the ' call to 
prayer', then shot. He blessed the man who shot him, and said 
' Shoot me again.' At Bizmishan all who did not flee were killed. • 
The Protestant Church, school, and parsonage of Chunkush were^ 



212 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

burned, also 83 houses ; Christians were talcen to the mosque, deprived 
of weapons, and forced to accept Islam. The chiefs of the village of 
Garmuri took the Christians to their houses while the Kurds plun- 
dered. The Christians were forced to accept Islam at the edge of the 
sword, and were then brutally circumcised. The Protestant chapel 
and parsonage were burned : and the Armenian Church was turned 
into a mosque. The Armenian Church and the Protestant chapel and 
parsonage of Hokh were burned. Those killed had kneeled to receive 
circumcision. Fifty-five women and children were taken to harems, 
and many girls were outraged. All but thirty-seven houses were 
burned in Huelu, many of the houses destroyed being kindled with 
kerosene sent by the government. Survivors were required to accept 
Islam. Under the lead of a Christian woman, men, women and 
children drowned themselves in a stream near Ozunonah. At Peri 
450 Christians were found to have become Moslems. About 2,000 
perished at Palu ; from Khoshmat about thirty women came to the 
barracks stark naked ; many outraged." 

Such are samples of the deeds done. Throughout this 
period especially the Moslem purpose of breaking down the 
Cross was plainly manifest. "While Ottoman hatred of 
Christians could not at all times spare the latter from deaths 
even when Islam had been embraced, it did so in hiindreds 
of cases, and many Christians who had not martyr courage 
were thus saved, with what real augmentation of the fol- 
lowers of Mohammed may be imagined. 

The Armenians have sometimes been blamed for sub- 
mitting so uniformly to the impositions of the Turk, but 
it must be remembered that in most cases 
Zeitun circumstances have been such that resistance 
by a people wholly destitute of arms would, 
except from a sentimental point of view, have availed 
nothing, and would only have incensed their oppressors to 
the commission of more fiendish cruelties. But there 
stands out at least one instance of Armenian resistance to 
Turkish diabolism that commands the admiration and sym- 
pathy of the civilized world. And it is a lasting shame to 
the " Great Powers," especially to England, that, after 
theil" true heroism aii4 nobl^ cpnduct, the Arnienian§ jji 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 213 

this instance were at last induced to yield to the designs of 
the despicable "Asiatic Key nard." 

Among the crests of the Taurus Mountains to the north 
of Armenian Cilicia are high upland valleys, and in one of 
these valleys is hidden the town of Zeitun, — a place dear 
to the Armenians because of its tradition of indejDcndence ; 
because for centuries it held aloft their national flag. 
There, up to 1393, existed the Armenian kingdom that fell 
at that date under the Seljukides. There the last house 
of Armenian kings, the Eouvinian, reigned for four 
centuries, establishing there their throne after the devas- 
tation of Great Armenia by Tartars and Persians, while 
the greater part of Lesser Armenia was in the hands of the 
Greeks. Until 1872 the Zeitunlis were able, by their 
courage and by favor of their mountain site, to keep them- 
selves in a state of semi-independence. What occurred 
then is related by Avetis Nazarbek (editor of the Hunt- 
cJiah),'^ a noted Armenian patriot. His story is in substance 
that at this date the Zeitunlis, who had been driven to in- 
surrection, " had the misfortune to believe in the fair words 
of the foxes of the Turkish Government,^" and fell into a 
snare by which they were overpowered. For the first 
time they were forced to see Turkish ofl&cials set foot 
and remain in their beloved city. But this humiliation 
was not all. Turkey saddled the town of Zeitun with a 
great fortress on the European model. This fortress it 
placed at the only entrance, just opposite the town. 

In the autumn of 1895, immediately after the signing of 
the Keform Scheme, Abd-ul-Hamid, " rubbing out with one 
hand what he had signed with the other,"' by the mouth of 
a minister declared, in language not to be mistaken, that 
" he could not openly promise reforms to the Armenians 
and consent to carry them out, without the risk, by that 
very act, of provoking discontent among the Mussulmans, 
who, in order to escape reform, might go so far as to mas- 
1 Contemporary Review, April, 1896. 



214 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

sacre all the Christians in Armenia. . . . And what Abd-nl- 
Hamid predicted was not only prophetic, rather it was a 
direct suggestion and marching order, meaning this : ' To 
have done with the Armenian question, let us have done 
with the Armenians/" 

Orders went forth in October, 1895, to make a thorough 
search in all Armenian houses, and to seize, not only arms, 

but " any common knife larger than a pen- 
Cause"^ knife/' In the carrying out of orders the work 

of slaughter began and swept over the Plateau. 
A Circassian of&cer, Hadji Asian, was sent by the local 
governor of Marash, in the vilayet of Aleppo, with an 
escort of zaptiehs, to make a " perquisition," or house-to- 
house search, in Zeitun. To such requirements the Zeitun- 
lis refused to submit. The Circassian retired to Bertous, 
got together over a hundred Bashi-bazouks, and attacked 

the village of Alabash, where the Armenians 
fense ^" ^^*^ ^^® courage to defend themselves. More 

Bashi-bazouks having been raised, the village 
was again attacked, and again unsuccessfully. A third 
attack being prepared for, the Zeitunlis organized a relief 
party, two hundred strong, which marched to Alabash. 
The Zeitunlis met the Ottoman troops and the Bashi- 
bazouks, and firing soon began. Towards the end of the 
battle, while yet neither side prevailed, a messenger came 
into the Zeitunli camp with information that a large body 
of Turks and Bashi-bazouks were preparing to attack 
Zeitun. Leaving one hundred of their comrades, the 
remainder of the Zeitunlis hastened back at nightfall. 
The other hundred that same night attacked the Mussul- 
man encampment and put the enemy to flight, after which 
they also returned to Zeitun, where the fight was already 
begun. Zeitun was beset by more than ten thousand men 
of the regular Ottoman troops and of Bashi-bazouks. The 
Zeitunlis took the offensive, and detached bands to besiege 
on all sides the formidable fortress from which at intervals 



THE ARMENIAN CEISIS AND MASSACKES. 215 

the cannon roared upon them. After fierce fighting for 
moro than fifty hourS;, the Zeitunlis succeeded in driving 
back the Mussuhnans and constraining the garrison in the 
fort, numbering six hundred, to submit. These six hun- 
dred Turks became prisoners to the Zeitunlis, as also did 
the Turkish officials in Zeitun. The fortress, with all its 
provisions of war, including two Krupp guns, was taken 
possession of by the Armenians. The prisoners were 
assigned to the school building and other houses of the 
town, where they were treated "as brothers.''^ The na- 
tional flag of the Armenians was floated over the fortress. 

There is not space to follow the heroic struggle of the 
Zeitunlis, extended through many weeks. Sufficient has 
been given to show that the Armenian is brave enough 
when he has a " fighting chance,^^ and to exhibit his 
humanity as a conqueror, in contrast with the inhumanity 
of the Turk. The sad finale was that the Zeitunlis, under 
the persuasion of fair promises from the Porte 
and from the Consuls of the European Powers, ^ ?f^® 
were at last prevailed upon to give up the 
possession of their city with its fortress to the Turkish 
Government, and to deliver the 30,000 refugees who were 
sheltered there to what proved to be the tender mercies 
of the Bashi-bazouks under the orders of the Sultan. 

Mr. Nazarbek digresses in the course of his article to 
defend the Huntchak party from the charge of vicious 
revolutionary and anarchistic principles. It 

can hardly be denied that the Huntchakists ^^,® Hunt- 

chakists. 
are agitators and " schemers for the libera- 
tion of Armenia from Turkish despotism. Whether they 
are always wise in their plans is another question. He re- 
marks that the adversaries of the Huntchak party, and 
principally the agents of the Turkish Government, have 
so distorted the tendencies, principles and character of 
the organization, that English opinion has been led to re- 
gard that party, " which is patriotic in the best sense, ■'' as 



216 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

the enemy of the people. To quote from his own de- 
fense : 

" Our adversaries try to sliow that we, the Huntchakists, are 
anarchists ; tliat we are opposed to law, fomenters of trouble, dis- 
order, and massacre — in short, that we are criminals. To prove this 
myth they dig in the dust of the Russian Embassy at Constantinople 
to find there ' authentic documents.' I know pei'fectly well that 
to find this sort of document, calling itself authentic, against the 
Huntchakists there is no place so good as the artificial archives of 
Hamid's Government, and again those of the Embassy above named. 
But as for me, who have not the privilege of visiting those archives, 
I would prefer to consult all the volumes of the Huntchak, the central 
organ of the Armenian revolutionary party . . . and ask to have 
pointed out to me one single line which is of an anarchist nature. I can, 
however, find for myself whole pages written against Anarchism." 

Driven to the Avail as they had been by the Turk;, living 
in daily expectation that the butchery that was already 
drenching Armenia in blood would reach them, and indeed 
having their hour announced to them by the coming of 
the Circassian Hadji Asian, the Huntchaks would have 
been less than human and would have deserved the execra- 
tion of mankind had they not stood by their flag. In 
reference to the order sent forth and its results Mr. 
IsTazarbek says : 

"Our cry, uttered in such a case, such a desperate case, came 
back to us echoed from Zeitun. Huntchakist comrades who were 
there and had their Committee, by the means and under the direc- 
tion of the Huntchak party, took the decisive resolution to defend 
themselves to the last ! With this cry those comrades (heroes that 
they are!) coming to the head of the movement — they, the Hunt- 
chakists, took fortress and town of Zeitun." 

When negotiations were going on for the capitulation of 

Zeitun by the Armenian victors, the Huntchakists put 

no faith in the promises of reform made by 

Turkish Abd-ul-Hamid, who, "while signing with one 
Perfidy o o 

hand, Avitli the other rubbed out," and sub- 
sequent events justified their distrust. The Porte openly 
violated one of the express stipulations of the Eeform bill 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 217 

by appointing a Moslem governor of Zeitun, instead of a 
Christian. The Embassies at once '^ protested/' and the 
Porto replied that it was only a temporary measure, and 
that the provisions of the Reform bill would later be com- 
plied with. The Embassies meekly accepted the explana- 
tion, and so a Moslem governor of Zeitun was fixed in place, 
and the heroes of Zeitun — including all its principal citi- 
zens — were deported and confined in Turkish dungeons to 
be tortured and to rot, as a consequence of accepting the 
kindly advice of the Powers ! 

(III.) The Slaughter of December, 1895. 

The tide of slaughter that was stemmed for a few days 
by the capture of Zeitun by the Armenians soon began to 
flow afresh, and by the middle of December . 

the city of Urf a had been marked for renewed 
massacre and plunder. This city, a center of Moslem 
fanaticism, was for a long time identified with Ur of the 
Chaldees by Christian as well as Moslem tradition ; it was 
also the seat of Abgar, the Armenian king, to whom, 
according to Armenian historians, Thaddeus preached. 
Here, in 1895, lived an American missionary. Miss Shat- 
tuck, who witnessed a part of the ordeal through which 
the city passed when the blow fell. Her 
account of the onslaught is given in Mr. Bliss's ^''^c^^ou^''^'' 
Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities, from 
which the following is quoted : 

" On Saturday, December 28tli, the firing of a few guns in the 
Moslem quarter south of us proved the signal. Immediately an im- 
mense multitude gathered on the hill back of our house. The guards 
in the street east of us went to meet the people, fired a few shots over 
their heads, and then allowed the mass of wild humanity, thirsty for 
blood, to pass into the city and begin their work. The Syrians and 
Roman Catholics were spared. All other Christians suffered complete 
loss of all home furnishings, and some houses were burned. The 
number of killed cannot be less than.3,.500, and may reach 4,000. Of 
these it is estimated that 1,500 perished in the great Gregorian Church. 



218 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

On Saturday that portion of the city was hardly touched, and great 
numbers of the Armenians flocked to the cliurch for safety that night. 
Sunday morning the work began again at daybreak, and wlien the 
people reached the church the soldiers broke open the doors. Then 
entering, they began a brutality which became a great holocaust. It 
was participated in by many classes of Moslems. For two days the 
air of the city was unendurable ; then began the clearing up. During 
two days we saw constantly men lugging sacks filled with bones and 
ashes. The dragging off of 1,500 bodies for burial in the trenches 
was more quickly completed, some being taken on animals. The 
last work of all has been the clearing of the wells. From one very 
large well it is said that sixty bodies were taken. It is well authen- 
ticated that twenty bodies were taken from another well. . . . Our 
loss of life, 105, all but nine being men. These nine include two 
women and seven children, who were in the Gregorian Church when 
it was sacked. Our wounded are many. I have eighteen under my 
immediate care. Most of these have several severe wounds. One has 
eleven ; one has eighteen ; ghastly sword and axe cuts on head and 
neck." 

A correspondent of the London Speaker, writing from 
Constantinople under date of December 28, wonders what 
would happen if the sovereigns of Europe and their Minis- 
ters, who have humbled themselves before the Sultan, 
could have suddenly revealed to them at their JSTew Year's 
feast the scenes of murder, pillage, torture and martyrdoms 
of their fellow- Christians which they have so lightly 
condoned. What if a living picture of it all should sud- 
denly rise before them ? Could the words of Macbeth 
rise to their lips ? 

" Thou canst not say I did it !" 

This correspondent, who had exceptional sources of 
information in the very region of the massacres, graph- 
ically summarizes the facts obtained from 
Correspondent's ^|-^ggg sources concerning the reign of Moliam- 
medan savagery and lust, and Mohammedan 
methods of converting Christians to the faith of Islam : 

" Such a picture appears before me now, as I have just been reading 
some private letters, from three different towns, from ladies who were 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 219 

eyewitnesses of what they describe. Tliey liave been sliut up for 
weeks in tlie midst of it, in constant danger of deatli tlieniselves — 
their own windows riddled with bullets and their rooms darlc with 
the smoke of burning houses. They saw the soldiers shoot down 
helpless men and women, and then hack them to pieces with knives 
and swords ; lieads cut off and fixed on bayonets, little children disem- 
bowelled, women carried off to satisfy tlie lust of the soldiers, churches 
burned which were filled witli men, women and children ; shops 
and houses stripped of everything, and tlie clothing taken from the 
backs of those not killed. They find themselves in tlie midst of 
thousands of people who are dying from day to day from terror, 
wounds, and starvation, and hear of the fate of their friends — this 
man flayed alive in the presence of his wife, this man brought with 
his wife before the officials, and bothof them shot because they refused 
to become Moslems ; most of their friends among the young women 
carried off by force, declared Moslem and given over to the harems 
of Turks ; in one case all the women of a neighboring village throwing 
themselves into the river to escape this fate. There is notliing sen- 
sational in the tone of these letters, as miglit be supposed from my 
grouping together of those facts. They tell the simple story of what 
they saw and heard eacli day. In all of them it is made clear that 
there will be very few Christians left in the spring. The Turks are 
doing tlieir work with diabolical thoroughness. The Christian families 
are broken up, even wlien all of them accept Mohammedanism, the 
wife and cliildren separated and given to Turks — the husband forced 
to take a Moslem wife. Women and cliildren are taken by tlie 
thousand and simply made Moslems, without any question of choice. 
Those who became Moslems in tprror in the midst of the massacres, 
and saved themselves by putting on white turbans or putting white 
flags over their doors, are given no chance of repentance; their families 
are broken up, and they have to find Moslem bondsmen to guarantee 
their remaining faithful. Those who have refused to become Moslems 
and have not been killed are persecuted in every way, and most of 
them will die before spring of cold and hunger." 

He then relates the fate of an old servant of his, whose 
village, like more than two thousand other villages, had 
been destroyed. This man^s village was raided twice and 
the cattle carried off, then the houses were plundered. 
Finally came a crowd of lazes and Turks from the surround- 
ing country and destroyed everything, killing thirty-three 
men and boys, among them the mother, four brothers and 



220 THE CKIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

five cousins of the old servant. One of liis brothers tried 
to buy his life for £150. They demanded £300^ and first 
cut ofE his hands^ then his arms, then his legs, to force him 
to confess that he had this amount hidden somewhere. 
They gashed the women with their swords to make them 
confess. The survivors of the family afterward lived in 
the ruins of their houses in utter destitution. 

These statements give fair samples of what occurred all 
through the closing months of 1895 and over much of the 
Armenian Plateau. The imagination must multiply them 
by scores and hundreds, and add nameless and unspeakable 
horrors, in order even to approximate the truth. 

As usual, the year ended with a climax of cruelty and 
butchery. The Christians' anniversary of the birth of 
their Saviour is uniformly chosen by the Turks as a season 
in which to wreak bloodiest vengeance. 

III. The Third Year of Butchery, 1896. 

As if gorged with murder and rapine, the " Great 
Assassin " for a time gave respite to his Armenian subjects, 
who were, nevertheless, destined but to wait until his 
periodical thirst for blood should demand more victims, 
and the pressure of the foreign Shylocks, and his own finan- 
cial needs, should again urge him on. The Christian world 
raised sympathetic but impotent hands in contemplation 
of the horrors of the late past in Turkey, hoping that 
the Christian Powers would now soon effectively act in 
concert to prevent a repetition of carnage. They remem- 
bered that every promise of reform which the Turk had 
made had been broken, and felt that, in the language of the 
editor of the New York Christian Advocate, "\\e must be 
dealt with as a convicted liar." In the United States the 
anti-Turkish feeling was rapidly and largely 

American augmented, and England especially was looked 
Sentiment. ° ° ^ "^ . 

to for that intervention which America ardent- 
ly advocated but could not practically give. Eesolutions 



THE ARMENIAN" CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 221 

expressing abhorrence of the outrages perpetrated npon 
inoffensive Christians in Turkey, rehearsing the terms of 
the Berlin Treaty, calling the attention of the Powers to 
their violation, and offering support to the President in any 
vigorous action that he might take to protect American 
citizens and property in Turkey, were passed by the United 
States Congress, late in January, 1896. In reviewing the 
spirit of these resolutions an expert writer on the East- 
ern Question, writing in the New York Observer (February 
6), was moved to say, in view of possible American inter- 
vention : 

"There is no doubt in the minds of those best informed that the 
Armenian outrages were deliberately planned to decimate an ancient 
Christian race because it is Christian, and to destroy the work of 
American missionaries among them. The United States is in duty 
bound to resist such action, and to maintain the treaty rights and 
privileges of its citizens, and the declaration of its unalterable deter- 
mination to do so is much less likely to provoke war than to prevent 
it. There is a vast deal of nonsense talked about the bearing of the 
Monroe doctrine on this question, as if it were a hard and fast rule 
of conduct precluding the United States under all conditions from 
participation in the international concert of the European race. That 
doctrine only announces the resolve of this nation to resist any at- 
tempt of European powers to forcibly extend their dominion on this 
continent, and its abstention from interference in the dynastic quar- 
rels of Europe has. never been more than a self-imposed ordinance, 
to be modified at any time. It does not deprive the United States 
of the right to intervene in such questions as the Armenian and 
others which involve the perpetration of crimes against civilization 
and humanity." 

The American press at this time anticipated the " For- 
ward Movement " later developed in England, for the libera- 
tion of Armenia, and inculcated the principle of taking the 
Eastern Question out of the secret chambers of diplomacy 
— a principle afterward favored by Mr, Gladstone, in a 
speech which will be noticed further on. The American 
Churches heartily joined in the movement. All cis- Atlan- 
tic eyes were then, as they are now, turned on Great Britain. 



222 THE CEIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

Centuries of cruelty liad warned her that Christians could 
not live in political subjection to the Turk without being 
subject periodically to persecution and massacre. Great 
Britain had guaranteed protection to the Armenians and 
Christendom held her morally bound to afford it ; but she 
did not afford it^ and her jealousy of Eussia stood in the 
way of allowing the Czar to do it. She would not let the 
Eastern Question be taken out of politics. 

More than the first half of 1896 was marked by com- 
parative peace in Turkey. Butchery and rapine continued 
all this time, but the crimes perpetrated were so over- 
shadowed by former enormities, and were so carefully con- 
cealed for the time, that the world was not freshly shocked. 
But the bloody appetite of the " Crimson Crested Vulture " 
was being whetted. He bided his time, and the time came 
— by appointment. It fell in the last week of August, and 
a more shocking story has not been told since the days 
of the French Revolution. 

Massacre at Coiststawtin-ople. 

On Wednesday, August 26, a massacre originated in 

Constantinople, in an attack on the Ottoman Bank by 

about thirty men who were officially reported 

^Itt k^^ to be Armenians. As so reported, this attack 
was one of a very peculiar character, to say the 
least. While dynamite explosives were used, they were 
very carefully thrown where none of the bank officials 
would be hurt, and no attempt was made to pillage the 
bank. The officials are said to have rushed upstairs, 
leaving some £10,000 at the mercy of the invaders, who 
touched not a farthing of it, and subsequently helped the 
cashier to pack it up safely ! The attacking party re- 
mained in the bank quietly until the premises were recap- 
tured by the Turkish troops. There is no evidence that 
they offered any resistance to these troops. It is impor- 
tant to note that when arrested they were forthwith 



THE AEMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 223 

placed on a ship (Sir Edgar Vincent's yacht, " Gulnare ") 
and expelled from the Ottoman dominions, no other pun- 
ishment being imposed npon them ! The British guardship 
" Imogene " and two Turkish despatch-boats kept watch 
over the yacht until it sailed. The Turkish Goyernment 
admitted that not one of these men was a subject of the 
Sultan. They escaped scot-free. 

.While dynamite was being exploded in the vestibule of 
the Ottoman Bank, similar explosions took place in differ- 
ent parts of the city, and the streets quickly filled with 
armed Turkish rabble. Armenian blood flowed like water. 
Whether the assailants of the Bank were robbers, fanatics 
or (most likely) tools of the Sultan, they gave 

a signal for which Abd-ul-IIamid had waited. fi^P"^^*^* 
® Slaughter. 

It is clear that preparations had been made 
for quickly arming the worst class of Turks, and immedi- 
ately after the "^attack" upon the Bank these began the 
work of slaughter, which they were permitted to carry on 
for forty-eight hours under the eyes of the police and the 
regular soldiers without any attempt at restraint. Women 
and girls were outraged by hundreds before being mur- 
dered, and the boys captured were subjected to indescrib- 
able atrocities. Says the London Speaker of September 
5th: 

" All the worst passions of hell were, in fact, let loose by the 
monster of Tildiz Kiosk ; and the unoffending Armenians of Con- 
stantinople had to submit to horrors to which even the Middle Ages 
can scarcely furnish a parallel." 

The Constantinople correspondent of the London Daily 
Neios reported that on Wednesday evening, towards sunset, 
systematic looting and murdering were carried on ; that 
on Thursday the mob took possession of the Stamboul 
side, and every person suspected of being an Armenian 
was killed. 

The Berlin correspondent of the London The Berlin ' 
Daily News forwarded to that paper the nar- Account, 



224 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

rative of the Constantinople correspondence of the Ber- 
liner Tagellatt, who thus described the awful scenes : 

" With my own eyes I saw the most savage barbarity. The Turk- 
ish people, which in my heart I always believed to be good, I saw 
savage, barbarous, fanatic, bloodtliirsty. Thousands of Turkish 
hamals I saw running through the streets bent on murder. Thirty, 
forty at a time I saw crouching at street corners armed with clubs 
and cudgels in order to catch one single Armenian and to fell him 
down with cruelty such as one would not kill a mad dog with. Be- 
fore my eyes an Armenian priest was hacked into a shapeless mass 
with wooden sticks by a horde of these savages. 

" I saw the policemen stand close by and smile. I saw a patrol of 
cavalry keep guard near the place to make sure that no help should 
be rendered the unfortunate man. Afterwards I saw such scenes 
more than twenty times over, but not one single case have I seen 
where the police or the soldiers disturbed the work of the Turkish 
assassins. 

" In Galata I saw dozens of corpses in the streets. In the Heudek 
street, where I live, three Armenians who passed through it were 
killed by Turkish club-bearers within one hour. Going through the 
streets late in the afternoon I met six manure wagons filled with 
corpses. It is stated that during the day alone at least 2,000 persons 
were killed. From all that I saw myself this number does not appear 
to me to be exaggerated. During my walk I hardly anywhere saw an 
officer of rank with the police or the military. In the afternoon the 
patrols gradually disappeared. Through the whole night the military 
was to be seen nowhere. 

" The arming of the Turkisli lower classes with clubs, which was 
not only allowed, but assisted, by the police, has wrought the great- 
est evil. If any one had stopped their work the bloodshed would 
have been very small. 

" Many strangers as well as permanent residents left by train. 
Many people fled on board the ships in the harbor. The pillaging 
continued even on Thursday morning. I saw from my window the 
miserable premises of an Armenian dealer in old clothes being broken 
into by six policemen, while the club-bearers were constantly beside 
them, so as to despatch the owner, who had hidden himself within. 
On the quay in Galata forty-six Armenians were killed in one heap 
inside a coal depot. Fourteen Armenians who came off or were 
dragged off an English merchant ship were flung into the water. In 
the new house of the Oriental Railways, ' Sirkedshi,' all Armenians 
were caught and massacred with clubs, spades, and iron bars. Even 



THE ARMENIAN ClllSTS AND MASSACEBS. 225 

on the platform of the station an Armenian stoker was dragged off 
the engine. In the street, before the guard-room of the Galata 
police, stood an open box with cartridges and revolvers, which were 
distributed to the Turks. As far as known, no Armenian offered 
resistance. On the bridge an Armenian was flung into the water, 
Turks threw stones at him each time he rose to the surface. Over a 
hundred Armenians fled to Greek ships, and are being blockaded by 
Turkish hordes. 

" There is no doubt that, for the most part, innocent persons have 
fallen victims to this new demonstration, because for a few hours the 
fury of the whole Turkish population was directed against all Arme- 
nians. From all reports and my own observations, moreover, it is also 
beyond doubt that during the fighting the Turkish authorities did 
not do their duty. At the Porte, where the Ministerial Council was 
about to begin, terrible confusion prevailed. Among the cruellest 
persecutors of the Armenians were the ' Tulumbajis,' the so-called 
Fire Brigade men. I particularly noticed the men who form the 
guard of Galata Tower searching the neighboring streets with 
knives and spears for defenceless Armenians. Whenever they 
found a dead man they vented their rage upon him by stabbing or 
kicking him. Except before the Ottoman Bank, I have not seen 
any Turks murdered. 

" General indignation is felt at the apathy of the Embassies. The 
absence of the guardships is criticised all the more bitterly because 
signs of uneasiness had been noticed for days before, and secret 
warnings were addressed to the Embassies by the committee. Yet 
at the decisive moment not one single war-vessel was in the harbor. 
They are all at Therapia or Bujukdere, where the Ambassadors 
have their summer outings. Amongst the Europeans justifiable 
indignation prevails on this account. In Pera several Europeans 
have been killed." 

The London Standard's correspondent stated that young 
Turkish boys were about Constantinople savagely plung- 
ing their knives into the bodies of the dead. 
The Spectator (September 5)^ remarking that jj' °+ 
these massacres were probably the greatest of 
modern times^ added : 

" It is stated that the massacres were deliberately planned, and 

many facts seem to point that way. In any case they were tolerated, 

and freely tolerated. No doubt there was some provocation in the 

shape of bomb-throwing, but the bulk of the people killed were 

15 



226 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

perfectly harmless and innocent. They were killed simply and 
solely because they were Armenians, and because, rightly or wrongly, 
it was believed to be the will of the Sultan that there should be a 
general massacre of the accursed race. One incident deserves 
special mention. Forty-five women and children took refuge on the 
roof of a house. They were all slaughtered, and their bodies thrown 
into the street." 

On Wednesday and during the night from Thursday to 
Friday an observer counted from a window in Constanti- 
nople 145 refuse carts and 14 large vans full of corpses. 

A correspondent of the Westminster Gazette (September 
28) wrote : 

"After visiting the principal parts of Constantinople, where the 
worst massacres and looting had taken place, a German lady and I 
decided to go to Halidjioglon, the Armenian quarter of Hasskeni, the 
scene, perhaps, of the worst butchery, where it is estimated some 
600 to 700 poor wretches lost their lives. . . . The sight that met 
our eyes is indescribable. House after house had been attacked by 
the mob, and stood there in deathless silence ; windows, doors and 
the very sides of buildings actually torn to pieces. Whole rows of 
houses, once full of life, were entirely deserted, and not a soul to be 
seen anywhere. The sight was terrible, and one which we cannot 
forget. The men killed, houses looted, and women gone. We found 
out afterwards that the poor women were now all living togetlier in 
houses near the church. If we saw one house in ruins and empty 
we saw a thousand, street after street in the same condition. The 
massacre commenced at dusk, and just after the Turkish priests 
(imams) had called the ' Faithful to prayers.' The first intimation 
the Armenians had of any attack was large stones being hurled at 
the windows, literally knocking windows and frames right into the 
rooms. The doors were next smashed down, and then the men 
butchered before the women and children's eyes. We entered a 
number of houses to find them all in the same state — empty, and 
besmeared with blood. By this time we had seen more than enough, 
and got away from the haunted place as soon as possible. The sight 
still remains fixed in our memory ; but those frightful deserted streets 
— when can we forget them ? " 

A conservative estimate has placed the number of 
Armenian dead in this massacre at 7,000. The representa- 
tive of a Berlin journal said : " The victims are beyond 
all estimate." 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES: 227 

A Constantinople correspondent of the London Sjjeaher 
closes his letter with words that go to fix the responsi- 
bility : 

" If we go to the real source of responsibility for this massacre we 
shall find it in the treatment of the Eastern Question by the Great 
Powers during the last two years. I do not think the blame rests 
upon the Ambassadors ; they are not free agents. But the Powers 
have made it clear to the Sultan that he can deal with his Christian 
subjects in this way without any fear of intervention on their part. 
Tlie latest estimate of the number of Armenians killed in the prov- 
inces within a year is 100,000. What are 10,000 more in the streets 
of Constantinople, or another 100,000 who are likely to be massacred 
in the interior within the next few weeks, in comparison with the 
peace of Europe, which cannot be maintained unless the Sultan is 
given a free hand to do what he pleases within the limits of his 
Empire ? This is the doctrine which has been proclaimed to the 
world. It is essential to the peace of Europe that there be no inter- 
ference with the Sultan. And yet there is no one to disturb the 
peace of Europe except the very men who make this excuse. Why 
not say outright what they mean : We do not care a penny for 
humanity or civilization or the Christians of Turkey, and we care for 
the peace of Europe only so long as it suits our interests. Each one 
of us is waiting for the time when he can settle the Eastern Question 
in his own interest. Till that time comes we will not allow it to be 
settled, no matter what happens. There has not been a day within 
the last two years when the Great Powers could not have brought the 
Sultan to terms, without disturbing the peace of Europe. There 
has not been a massacre that they might not have prevented. They 
could have stopped this one in an hour. They have simply chosen 
to do nothing. It is an awful responsibility which they have as- 
sumed. How it is to be distributed among them history will decide." 

Emboldened by the successful massacre in Constanti- 
nople, and by the non-intervention of the Embassies, 
similar outrages were committed by the Turks 
in various provinces, especially in the Kharput Eghin. 
region. The city of Eghin suffered greatly. 
In that place at least 1,000 Armenians were slain on the 
charge of being disloyal. For three days the killing was 
continued. "The most hopeless features in the massacre 
were that the Armenians never struck a stroke, even with 



228 . THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

sticks, in their own defense — they had no arms — and that 
the Government immediately reported to Europe that the 
Armenians of Eghin had burned their own houses and fled 
to Persia."' 

The London Spectator of December 13, 1896, has a 
graphic account of the opening hours of the massacre, 
showing the preparation for it and the participation of the 
Turkish Government and soldiery in it. 

Of the subsequent and resulting horrors an American 

missionary, Eev. J. K. Brown, gave an account a year 

after the massacres took place. He arrived at 

Account. Kharput September 26, on his return from 
America, and shortly after undertook to visit 
some of the principal cities in which he had labored in 
previous years, especially Arabkir, Eghin and Malatia. 
In the Missionary Herald, the official organ of the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, he 
gives a graphic picture of the desolation of these cities in 
contrast with their past beauty and prosperity. His ac- 
count of the sad fate and condition of Eghin, written 
under date of October 24, 1896, gives the secret of its 
escape from the earlier massacres that swept across the 
Plateau : 

" Arrived here a week ago by a road winding along the Euphrates, 
reminding us at every turn of the scenery of Switzerland. Beautiful 
for situation, the pride of all Armenians, was this city. Her citizens 
held positions of commanding influence at Constantinople and in 
most of the cities of the empire. It was certainly the most remark- 
able city in this land, in its origin, which was like that of New 
England, in the character, intelligence, public spirit, wealth, refine- 
ment, and influence of its people. 

"It had long since become a residential city of those Armenians 
who amassed their property elsewhere, and the houses, not to say 
homes, were like those of the capital. About a year ago, when that 
terrible wave of destruction overwhelmed oiu- fields, this city pur- 
chased exemption by the payment of some 1,600 Turkish pounds. 

" During all this past year they have lived in constant fear of im- 
pending slaughter, and unable to escape their doom. At last the 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 229 

command went forth, and a month ago, for two days and nights, the 
fearful work of pkmder, blood, and lust went on. As far as knoM^n, 
only one old man was spared of all the men, youth, and larger boys 
who could be found, all the bridges and roads being carefully guarded. 
But the sickening story has long ago been read by Christendom and 
with silence. Would it be so if with my eyes they could look out 
upon this waste of ruins in place of the fair city I once knew, and 
hear the heartbreaking stories told with streaming eyes and pallid 
lips?" 

And this condition of things is to he found over a large 
part of the Plateau, and the so-called Christian Powers are 
still defying a righteous Grod by turning a deaf ear to the 
cry of " Bleeding Armenia " and perpetuating " The Crime 
of Christendom ! " The events that have been detailed are 
the first-fruits of that policy — the First Scene in the closing 
Act of the tragedy of the century ! 

IV. Summary of Eestjlts ais'd Eespon-sibilities. 

A startling estimate of the loss of Armenian life in 

Turkey has been made by one who cites the facts. There 

are no fewer than eight cities in Turkey, in 

-, p ^ • ^ -, The Last Death 

each one oi which more persons were massacred j{,ou 

than fell on the Union side in the terrible 

seven days' battle of the Wilderness. At Gettysburg, the 

fiercest battle of our Civil War, 3,070 fell on the Union 

side. Twice that number were killed in the two massacres 

at Urfa. During our entire Civil War 110,070 Union 

soldiers were slain in battle. During two and a half years 

not far from that number — probably more — of Armenians 

were killed by the Turks, with accompaniments of inhuman 

barbarity. 

The results in a single center of butchery, Kharput, will 

give a fair view of what occurred in these many centers. 

The following statistics are from a letter from 

a well-knoAvn American missionary in Khar- l";^K^arput 

"^ Eegion. 

put to his son, a student in Amherst College, 

dated March 11, They are eminently conservative, qs haye 



230 THE CKIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

necessarily been all the statements from American mission- 
aries. The figures were gathered at the Gregorian Epis- 
copate, including Kharput city and its seventy-three 
villages : 

" Needy persons 26,990 

Houses plundered 6,020 

Houses burned 1,861 

Churches badly injured and defiled 29 

Churches burned , 15 

Protestant chapels destroyed 5 

Protestant chapels badly damaged 18 

Monasteries burned 2 

Monasteries damaged 4 

Forced marriages to Turks 166 

Eape 2,300 

Forced conversions, priests 12 

Forced conversions, men and women 7,664 

Wounded 1,315 

Miscarriages 829 

Killed in fields and highways 280 

Persons burned , 56 

Died from hunger and cold 1,014 

Suicides 23 

Martyrs, bishop 1 

Martyr^, priests 11 

Martyrs, Protestants 3 

Martyrs, teachers 7 

Martyrs, men, women and children 1,903 

Total deaths 4,127 

Loss of property $7,268,605 

" These figures do not include reports from the Malatia, Arabkir, 
Eghin, Charsanjak, Geglii, Palu, Chunkush and Diarbekr districts." 

Professor Lepsius, of Berlin University, one of the most 

distinguished scholars of the age, went to Armenia and 

traveled over the accessible parts of it to in- 

Estimate by yggtigate the facts for himself. He recently 
Lepsms. ° 

published a book entitled, Armenia and 

Europe : an Indictment, in which he records what he was 

able to learn on the ground where the events occurred, 

B;is record in verified statistics is as f ollpw^ ; 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 231 

" Killed in the massacres, about 35,000. 
" Towns and villages laid waste, about 2,500. 
" Churches and convents destroyed, 668. 

" Forced to adopt the Mohammedan faith, 559 villages, with all their 
surviving inhabitants and hundreds of families in the towns. 
" Churches turned into mosques, 282. 
" Number of those without means of subsistence, about 500,000." 

This is simply a record of the registered facts in cold 
statistical form. There must be added to these the multi- 
tudes in the unregistered villages who were murdered, or 
who died of their wounds, or who succumbed to hunger or 
disease, or who perished in trying to escape and were 
buried in the mountains under the ice and snow, — so that 
100,000 would probably be an understatement of the 
victims of the Armenian massacres. 

Professor Lepsius states clearly the real cause of the 
massacres, his statement agreeing with the view elsewhere 
presented in the course of this discussion. He says : 

" The Armenian massacres . . . were an administrative measure 
of the Sublime Porte, whose one motive and object was to make 
the reforms enforced by the Great Powers finally impossible by the 
annihilation of the Armenian people." 

Such a record of horrors seems incredible as Christen- 
dom is j)assing into the twentieth century. 

The three years of massacre in Turkey and all the cir- 
cumstances connected show that the merciless slaughter 
was the result of the deliberate revival by the Sultan of the 
long-dormant holy law of the divine right of the Moslem 
to slay all dissidents. The scheme for carrying out this 
law was planned with consummate cunning and cruelty. 
Bugles signaled the moment for the beginning of blood- 
shed, and bugles called off the butchers at a signaled time ! 

More painful perhaps than the contemplation of the 

awful death-roll is the condition of the more than half a 

million helpless beings spared by the sword 

, , . i i • 1 T 1 1 Destitute Mul- 

to starve m a poverty-stricken land, where titudes, 

their own kith and kin could not help them 



232 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

and their enemies would not if tliey could. Over a vast 
territory vineyards have been torn up, all the Armenian 
sources of production destroyed, leaving them in every 
way unable to help themselves. The authentic stories of 
naked destitution and crying hunger are heartrending. 
Yet upon even these starving wretches the Sultan has 
imposed " taxes ^' for the repletion of the purse which 
was drained to shed their blood and make them home- 
less ! 

It is noticeable that massacres uniformly occurred in 
provinces for which the Sultan had promised reforms. 

The outrages in Trebizond, for example. 
By Order of the i • , i , ,-, ,■ ,-,, i i • 

Stdtan. occurred ]ust about the time that he gave his 

assent to the scheme of reforms. An incident 
often repeated was the ordering of apprehensive Armenians 
to open their shops with the assurance that those who did 
so would be in no danger and then a sudden attack would 
be made and the defenseless places of business looted. In 
only a few places, as at Diarbekr, Gurun, Malatia and 
Arabkir, did the Armenians attempt to defend themselves, 
and in such places their slaughter was proportionately 
great and the plunder complete. It is reported that the 
shops were absolutely gutted, even the doors and windows 
of the houses being carried away, and in the market-places 
not a single article of merchandise could be found. Even 
the clothing of men, women and children was stripped 
from them, and they had to flee naked. 

It may be asked. Why did the Turk thus attack the best 
tax-paying element in his Empire, where tax-incomes are 

so greedily planned and so rigidly demanded, as 
Reasons. ^^^^ ^^ SO badly needed ? The answer is that 

besides religious hatred and contempt, there 
is grave jealousy of the Armenian' as a political factor. 
Mohammedan supremacy in all things was at stake, and it 
was feared that if the Armenians were not suppressed they 
would in time, with the countenance and support of Ohris' 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 233 

tian Europe, become dangerous to the existence of the 
Moslems. The natural method on the part of the Turk, to 
make secure his own religious and political supremacy, was 
to kill as many Armenians as possible and render the sur- 
vivors powerless. 

It is idle to argue that Abd-ul-Hamid is not personally 
to blame for the Armenian bloodshed. The order for each 
and every massacre came directly from him, and at his 
signal each butchery ceased. We must remember, now 
that the idea that he may not be the responsible one seems 
to be spreading, what kind of a man he is. He is the brain 
and the power of "the Palace '^ and his so-called Ministers, 
who make up "the Porte '^ — the Turkish Cabinet — are no 
more to him than so many clerks. They dare not assume 
the smallest responsibility. Everything is submitted to 
the Sultan personally. He is supreme. It is so well under- 
stood among the Ambassadors that "the Palace '' is all in 
all, that some of them have broken through old forms of 
etiquette and have addressed remonstrances and counsel 
direct to the Sultan. The Eussian Ambassador nearly 
always does so. It is well understood in Constantinople 
that unless the Sultan himself can be reached, any effort 
to influence the Turkish Government is futile. During his 
rule he has repeatedly changed all his underlings, even the 
whole Court ; but his policy has never swerved. This 
policy has always been directed toward three things : 

1st. The maintenance of his perfect autocracy. 

2d. The accumulation of a mighty fortune (the Sultan 
pays no taxes). 

3d. The nullification of European influence, which he 
detests and dreads. 

What a commentary on " European influence,^' that this 
creature is permitted to run his chosen course unchecked 
here at the closing of a century famous for the general 
advancement of the world ! 

Three continuous years of butchery had thus been per- 



234 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

mitted to pass uncliecked by any vigorous interferences 

on the part of the European powers, and the 
of England. Sultan could afford to laugh at a Concert which, 

for various reasons, could not act. The Sultan 
laughed, while the civilized world, or that part of it un- 
bound by diplomatic chicanery, wondered and wept. It is 
not even to be supposed that the better element of the 
Sultan's Mohammedan subjects laughed with him, for, 
wading in the innocent blood that he has caused to flow 
about their feet, they have awakened to the fact that their 
sovereign has forever blemished them by associating them, 
before the world, with his hired assassins — the Kurds, the 
Lazes, and the lowest of classes of Mussulmans — and that his 
heavy collections of revenue or " contributions " from them 
in the name of Islam are not for the professed purjDoses of 
religion, but for the continuance of butcheries solely for 
the sake of his own preservation. Many of them are doubt- 
less weary of replenishing the ever-depleted purse of the 
Palace ; yet of course they are anti- Christian in feeling, 
and may be counted upon to continue practically their 
allegiance and support to the Sultan. 

For the Armenian blood that flowed in Turkey so copi- 
ously during the three years just reviewed, England must 
be held responsible, because of her action in connection 
with the Treaty of Berlin and the Anglo-Turkish Conven- 
tion, by. the first of which slie roused active hope among 
the Armenians, thus giving the Sultan precisely the 

excuse for attack that he wanted, and by the 
Judgment second of which she brought about a deadlock 

between the other Powers and herself. Says 
Mr. James Bryce : 

"If there had been no Treaty of Berlin and no Anglo-Turkish 
Convention, the Armenians would doubtless have continued to be 
oppressed as they had been oppressed for centuries. But they vi^ould 
have been spared the storm of fire, famine, and slaughter which 
descended upon them in 1895 ; their women woidd not have been 
outraged, their priests martyred, their children led into captivity, 



THE ARMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 235 

their religion, over large districts, utterly blotted out. This is what 
European protection has brought in its train ; this is what England 
and Russia between them have accomplished. Better it would have 
been for the Christians of the East if no diplomatist had ever signed 
a protocol or written a despatch on their behalf." 

There is no evidence that England would at any time 
have been hindered materially by all or any of the other 
Powers if she had attempted separate action. There is no 
evidence that Eussia would have attempted to stay her 
course. Prince Lobanoff and Count Goluchoffski had 
agreed, in Vienna, that it was possible to maintain the 
"territorial " status quo in Turkey for some time and had 
pledged their respective Governments to that end. This 
pledge, as has been noted by Canon MacColl, obliged the 
two Powers, Russia and Austria, to resist any separate 
action aimed at the destruction of the " territorial " status 
quo, but did not pledge them to oppose any other kind of 
separate action. 

But what of the " Concert of Europe'' at this juncture ? 
It was certainly thought and hoped that now at least and 
at last it would act, in view of the fact that 

TliG Concsrl; 

the Sultan had plainly shown that nothing of Europe, 
but coercion could impede his course of Chris- 
tian oppression. It acted — as usual ! 

The ambassadors met on the 30th of August to draw up 
a Collective Note, to be sent to the Porte, directing his 

attention, among other things, to strong evi- 

. Collective 

dence that the Constantinople m_assacre of the uo^e, 

Armenians had been carefully organized, and 

that the authorities had connived at it ; that orders were 

known to have been given to the Bashi-bazouks to cease 

the slaughter on Thursday two hours after sunset ; that 

this massacre lasted thirty hours, during which time the 

troops and the police remained completely passive ; also 

that hundreds of men were brought over to the city from 

the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, evidently to take part in 



236 THE CRIME OF CHRISTEKDOM. 

the massacres, and were afterward sent back to their 
homes. 

Another meeting was held by the Ambassadors on the 
next day, to dehberate on the wording of the Collective 
Note to be sent to the Porte. The evening of the same 
day witnessed an Ottoman illumination in Constantinople 
in honor of the nineteenth anniversary of Abd-ul-Hamid's 
accession to the throne. During the day he was officially 
complimented by the Embassies, in the manner usual on 
such occasions ; but he is reported to have been greatly 
moved when he learned that the Embassies would not 
illuminate in his honor, and he even dispatched his Minis- 
ter of Foreign Affairs to represent to them that the omis- 
sion to illuminate might have a bad effect on his troops. 
But the Embassies drew a line at this display of congratu- 
lation, and ^^ officially" notified the Sultan that after the 
events of the past few days the representatives of the 
Powers could do no more than " observe mourning," and 
that illuminations which, according to European ideas, sig- 
nified rejoicing, would be " out of place." 

The Collective Note having been completed, it was sent 
to the Porte on the 4th of September. The note laid 
stress on the organized character of the mob that led the 
Constantinople massacre, and cited several cases bearing 
out its charge. It quoted the declaration of two Moham- 
medans in the service of a European — that they were re- 
quisitioned by the police, who gave them weapons and 
ordered then to kill Armenians. It adduced the testimony 
of a Mohammedan who, being armed with a bludgeon, was 
being taken to Yildiz Kiosk by Embassy dragomans, when 
he assured the latter that nothing would be done to him ; 
and that on arriving at the Palace this individual was 
recognized by the servants there. The Note also alluded 
to the distribution of bludgeons to the mob by the munici- 
pality, and declared that the Embassies were prepared to 
produce the evidence in their possession. Finally the 



THE ABMENIAN CRISIS AND MASSACRES. 237 

Ambassadors demanded that " an inquiry should be made 
and the guilty parties severely punished/^ 

The accommodating Sultan promptly replied to the 
ISTote, throwing all the blame for the massacre on the Ar- 
menians, and announcing the trial by an ex- 
traordinary tribunal, of leaders and abettors of The Porte's 
the outrages. Meantime he was silently and 
expeditiously deporting the floating Armenian population 
from Constantinople, Steamers were daily loaded with 
Armenians being sent to Trebizond and other parts. The 
Embassies protested against this wholesale deportation, 
but, as Avas reported to the London Times, " with little 
effect." An irade was issued authorizing a special Com- 
mission, comprising delegates from the Embassies, to in- 
quire into the Armenian deportations ; but when the Com- 
mission met it found almost nothing to do, since all the 
Anatolian Armenians had been sent away, and the Porte 
had limited the action of the Commission to Armenians in 
the employ of the foreigners ! It was a characteristic 
piece of the old style of Turkish trickery and duplicity. 

In the last week of September the Embassies reiterated 
to the Porte the charges in their first Collective Note. 
Early in October the Porte announced his 
, willingness to grant a general amnesty, to in- jP^^'^Pf 
stitute reforms in all the Asiatic provinces, 
and to allow a new Patriarch to be elected if the Armenian 
Revolutionary Committee would undertake to stop any 
further dynamite-throwing. About the same time an 
Armenian Circular was issued to the Embassies declaring 
that Armenian patience was exhausted, and pointing out 
that while arrest of innocent Armenians continued, the real 
culprits, the Kurds, were constituted guardians of the public 
safety. 

So the Armenian question was once more, in Turkey as 
elsewhere, lost in labyrinthine diplomacy, and the Turk 
again shook hands with himself and laughed. 



238 THE CRIME OE CHRISTENDOM. 

The Constantinople massacres were so astounding and 

absorbing that the similar outrages in the city of Eghin, 

in Kharput villayet, on the 15th and 30th of 

(Hadstone September, in which nearly 2,000 Armenians 
were slaughtered, passed almost unnoticed. 
But this echo of the butchery at the capital aroused Mr. 
Gladstone's just indignation. In view of the whole situa- 
tion, he took occasion to express himself forcefully to a 
French gentleman connected Avith the Paris Figaro that 
had appealed to him, in the course of his letter saying : 

" The question whether practical effect can be given to the general 
indignation is now trembling in the balance, and will probably soon 
be determined." 

Eeferring to Austria's opposition to separate action he 
cited the case of Russia in delivering Bulgaria in 1878 and 
in liberating the other Balkan States, and of France in 
1840 in espousing the cause of Egypt. Then he summed 
up the facts in the present situation as only he could have 
done : 

" To-day, emboldened by impunity, the Great Assassin seated on 
the throne of Constantinople has accumulated massacres on massa- 
cres, and, by patronizing these and shifting the responsibility of 
bloodshed on his unhappy subjects, has identified himself in the 
most manifest way with the enormous mass of crimes perpetrated by 
his tools. For more than twelve mortal months he has managed to 
triumph over the diplomacy of the six Powers. The truth is that the 
six Powers have been led into prostrating themselves at his feet, and 
nothing in history is comparable to the humiliations which they have 
so patiently endured. The Sultan has consequently had every en- 
couragement to continue in a path crowned by such success, and the 
imminent question seems to be, not whether he will persevere in it, 
but when and where he will proceed to the next of his murderous ex- 
ploits. The ulterior effects of this conduct will probably deprive him 
of the very last chance of maintaining the integrity of his most 
miserable and most miserably governed Empire." 

It is the humiliating spectacle of the Christian Powers 
of Europe bound hand and foot by their own iniquity in 
turning loose the Turkish butcher upon his Christian 
subjects ! 



CHAPTER VII. 

LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERIST QUESTIOK. 

The Second Scene in the Third Act of the Eastern 
Tragedy has proved to be the nnexpected that always hap- 
pens. The three successive seasons of Arme- 
nian massacre ought to have been enough to B- Second Scene 

^ . , .° in the Act. 

rouse the world. But Armenia itself is too 

remote from Europe and European interests. The sense of 
the physical remoteness in the English mind was long ago 
well brought out by a saying of Lord Palmerston : " Those 
who desire to send the British fleet to Ararat had better 
arrange to reproduce the Flood." Almost equally great, in 
a figurative sense, is the separation of the Greek, Roman 
and Protestant churches from the Armenian Church, — a 
separation that began, as has been seen, in the early Chris- 
tian centuries. In order to arouse Christendom it was 
necessary that the center of Turkish pressure and oppres- 
sion should be shifted to that part of the Empire most 
vitally connected with the great nations of Europe and the 
Churches represented in them. 

With the massacre of the Armenians in Constantinople 
it became necessary for the Turk to shift the financial 
pressure with its diabolical methods of tax- 
gathering from the Armenians to the Greeks. Sliifting 
o ° . Pressure. 

The Armenians of the Plateau had been im- 
poverished and their property largely confiscated or de- 

239 



240 THE CRIME OF CHEISTEKBOM. 

stroyed by the close of 1896 ; and the same work had been 
done so far as practicable with those of Anatolia. The 
Greek subjects of the Porte — in the islands of the Archi- 
pelago, the Macedonian belt, and the region up to the 
Balkans — were now practically the only Christian people 
left worth the Turkish taxing. The application to them of 
the tax-gatherer^s methods was only a question of time and 
opportunity. The extension of the pressure to all the 
Greeks of the Empire was sure to come sooner or later, 
and the connection of these by race and religion with 
Greece itself could not fail to rouse all the Greeks in due 
time. 

Several things have united to bring about the latest 
Greek Christian uprising. Among these may be enume- 
rated : the ever-recurring demands of Commercial Europe 
for the interest on the Turkish bonds, and the exigencies 
of the Sultan's government, with its soldiery and officials 
unpaid, and of the Sultan's harem" and household ; the 
deadlock of diplomacy that has transformed the Powers of 
Europe into '^the Weaknesses" — as some one has phrased 
it — and made them objects of contempt to the Turk ; the 
consciousness of security on the part of the Sultan, result- 
ing from his secret treaty with Great Britain and from his 
long continued immunity in butchery ; the peculiar situ- 
ation on the Island of Crete where the Turk had balked 
reform and defied the Powers. 

The events of the opening months of 1897 lead to the 
consideration of the Cretan uprising and the Greek inter- 
vention. 

Immediate results were never more entirely hidden from 
mortal vision ; ultimate results for righteousness and 
Christian freedom were never more certain. 

I. The Cretaist Uprisustg, aistd the History that 
Led to it. 

For nearly two thousand years the island of Crete has 



LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERN QUESTION. 241 

been the scene of bloody tragedy, and for mncli of that 
time the history of the Cretans is one of ruthless oppression, 
in turn by the Komans, the Moors, the Venetians, the 
Turks, the Egyptians, and the Turks again, backed by 
the European Powers, and of heroic struggle for liberty. 
In view of the history of Crete from 66 B. C, Avhen, the 
last of the states of ancient Greece to maintain independ- 
ence, it was subjugated by the Romans, down to the 
present time, when the Turks have been aided and abetted 
in their corrupt and murderous misrule of the island by 
the great Christian Powers, it is amazing that there should 
have been preserved among the Cretans enough of the 
ancient faith and valor to afford to the onlooking world 
such a splendid exhibition of courage as has recently been 
given. It can only be accounted for by the fact, as Mr. 
Gladstone has put it, that " in respect of everything that 
makes a man to be a man, every Cretan is a Greek,"' and 
Greece has lately given to the world elevating and inspir- 
ing evidence that the true Hellenic spirit still lives. That 
little power, ^Hiardly counted in the midst' of European 
states, is,"' exclaims Mr. Gladstone with admiration, "a, 
David facing six Goliaths ! " 

The history of Crete has recently been rehearsed by 
M. J. Gennadius,'^ whose array of facts is here summarized 
in part. The most serious of the oppressions 
of the Cretans began in the ninth century of h"^^*^^ 
our era, when the Andalusian Moors, ravaging 
the eastern Mediterranean, landed in Crete. The Moors 
soon mastered the entire island, and forcibly converted to 
Mohammedanism almost the whole population, slaying 
recalcitrants and transforming all churches into mosques. 
Only one town was allowed certain immunities as to the 
exercise of ancient usages and the practice of the Chris- 
tian faith. 

In 960 Crete was reconquered by the Byzantines, and it 
1 Contemporary Beview, April, 1897f 

j6 



242 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

remained a part of the empire until 1204, when that band of 
Frankish buccaneers, known as the " Fourth 
c^°^ad^ Crusade," took Constantinople and parcelled 
out among themselves the spoils, thus prepar- 
ing the way for the establishment of the Turks in Europe 
by the weakening of the Greek Empire. Crete falling to 
the lot of Boniface, Marquis of Montserrat, who ceded it 
to the Venetians for 10,000 marks, four and a half 
centuries were marked by cruel Venetian domination, 
against which insurrections were frequent but ineffectual. 
The Venetian rule is said to have been " an oppression 
diabolical in its refinements ! " It is historically estab- 
lished that the Venetian proveditori extended protection 
*' only to such Cretans as would qualify for the privilege 
by assassinating some relative of the first degree ! " 
Peasants were not even permitted to complain of any in- 
justice. By order of the proveditori on one occasion, the 
pregnant wives of four Cretan chiefs were disemboweled and 
their unborn offspring publicly exposed, as a warning to 
insurgents. Nevertheless, between 1207 and 1365 the 
Cretans rose no less than twenty-seven times against their 
Venetian rulers, '^some of these insurrections being actual 
wars of ten years' duration, signalized by deeds of heroism 
that remain unf orgetable to this day in the songs of the 
Greek people." 

As early as 1475 Turkey contemplated the invasion of 

Crete, but it was not till 1645 that the enterprise was 

carried out. After a resistance of fifty-seven 

Turkish ^q,^^ Canea fell, and for the two following 

Conquest. -' -^ . . ° 

years war was carried on in other parts of the 

island. The investment of Candia commenced in 1648, 

and lasted twenty years — "the most memorable siege of 

modern times." Ultimately, in 1669, a treaty was signed 

whereby Venice ceded the island, but retained three coast 

fortresses, which were afterwards ceded to the Turks. Then 

began a period of Cretan history ''so dark and dismal that 



LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERN QUESTION. 243 

no words can picture it." Dapper, Tournefort, Olivier, 
Savary, Pocock, Pasliley, Pouqueville, Hammer, and other 
travelers and historians tell of the fanatical ferocity of 
the Moslems in Crete. The only crime for which a Turk 
ran the risk of punishment was indulgence toward the Chris- 
tians. Moslem ferocity in Crete was given such license 
that it developed into insubordination against the Porte, 
who in 1813 sent Hadji- Osman Pacha to the island with 
orders to decimate disloyal Mussulmans. For the purpose 
of decimation, Christians were employed, who thus brought 
upon themselves indescribable retaliation. This ''hellish 
condition " of affairs continued so long, and into such 
apathy had the oversuffering Cretans fallen that they were 
not at once stirred by the uprising of the rest of the 
Greeks in 1821. But the necessary impulse was given by 
the Turks themselves, who hanged the Creek Patriarch 
and massacred Grreeks at Constantinople, while Mussulmans 
in Crete began an indiscriminate slaughter, hanging priests 
and desecrating churches. Then the Cretans rose from 
their stupor, " Phoenix-like, with all the fire of their tra- 
ditional valor, "^ and at the close of the first year's campaign 
the Turks held only the three or four fortified coast towns. 
The Cretans were reinforced by certain noble 

families of Cretan Mussulmans, and Cretan J-" Greek 

Revolution, 
refugees in Asia Minor hastened home. In 

1822 a French officer. Captain Baleste, came to the island 
with a number of Philhellenes, and defeated the Turks by 
sea and land, when an Egyptian fleet of 140 ships landed 
in the Bay of Suda an army of 10,000 Albanians, in 023- 
position to whom Baleste fell. The Pacha of Egypt then 
poured into Crete overwhelming reinforcements, and the 
island was devastated from shore to shore. The land re- 
mained untilled for four years, disease and famine ensued, 
and the population was reduced by one half. But the 
marvellous recuperative power of the Cretans was soon 
afterwards brilliantly demonstrated, The island wa§ gud- 



244 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

denly wrested from foreign usurpation. Crete then 
claimed union with the common Fatherland. "But/' 
says M. Gennadius, " by one of the most iniquitous acts 
which mark the proceedings of modern policy, in spite of 
the earnest and indignant protests of Lords Holland, 

Russell, and Palmerston, the London Protocol 
^^Turk^^^ of February 2, 1830, decreed that Crete should 

again be forced, not, indeed, under the Sul- 
tan's government, but under the Pacha of Egypt, who was 
thus recompensed for the atrocious acts of savagery with 
which his African troops had desolated the island." The 
forces of the Allied Powers, aided by Turkish ships, 
blockaded Crete, while 3,000 Africans, with the represen- 
tatives of the Christian Powers at their head, marched into 
the interior, broke up the Cretan cordon established by the 
armistice, and proclaimed that by the will of Europe Crete 
became the property of the Pacha of Egypt. The Great 
Powers of course guaranteed certain "reforms." When 
these reforms were demanded by an assembly, the only 
answer received was the appearance of a body of Albanians, 
who fell upon the unarmed assembly. Some they dis- 
patched on the spot, and afterward hanged the rest in a 
neighboring olive grove. 

In 1840, when Mehemet Ali was compelled by the Triple 
Alliance to evacuate Syria, Crete was retroceded to Turkey. 
In 1841 the Cretans again took up arms and proclaimed 
their union to the mother country, delegates from all parts 
of the island having assembled for that purpose. But 
Europe remained inexorable ; and for the third time the 
Cretans were re-enslaved to Turkey, with profuse promises 
of "reforms." 

So matters went on, leading to the insurrection of 1866- 
69 — " the most redoubtable and most destructive which the 

island experienced in recent times, and in 
Successive ^^jch the attitude of the Powers towards 

Crete 9-11(1 Greece w;^s pitilessly unjust ^-nd 



LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERN QUESTION. 245 

most impolitic." The whole island took up arms, and the 
moral effect was immense. The Sultan, '^''on the advice 
of some of the Powers," sent to Crete as leader of his forces 
Mustapha Pacha, a bloodthirsty Albanian chief who pos- 
sessed an exceptional experience of Cretan warfare. After 
considerable slaughter, Mustapha marched against the 
ancient convent of Arkadi, where a large number of women 
and children had taken refuge under the pro- 
tection of 250 armed Cretans. For two days ^^a*^ °f 
, . '' Heroes. 

Mustapha s twelve regiments were held m 

check by that handful of heroes. M. Gennadius tells the 
story : 

"When, ultimately, field artillery was brought to bear upon the 
great convent, and its walls were breached, the besieged were sum- 
moned to surrender. One of the most heroic episodes in Cretan his- 
tory then ensued. The Cretans knew what awaited their women 
and children at the hands of Mustapha' s savages, and they deemed 
death preferable. At nightfall the Abbot Gabriel celebrated mass, 
and, having administered the Holy Sacrament, he set a torch to some 
barrels of powder and led his devoted flock to eternity as he had led 
them in the fight. It was eleven o'clock at night when the Turks, 
pouring through the breach, despatched the few unhappy survivors of 
this Cretan Missolonghi. It was a holocaust to liberty which lent 
more vigor to the insurrection than a hundred victories." 

Mustapha was ultimately compelled to retreat to Canea, 
his army of 30,000 having been reduced to 18,000. Suc- 
ceeding campaigns having proved equally dis- 
astrous to the Turkish arms, " it became mani- ^ismarck's 

Judgment. 
fest that the determination and valor of the 

Cretans had rendered the Turkish Grovernment more amen- 
able to some arrangement calculated to rid her of an 
untenable and ruinous possession." Lord Loftus, the 
British Ambassador at Berlin, heard Count Bismarck say 
that " if England would assist in obtaining the cession of 
Crete to Greece, all difficulties in the East would be at once 
arranged." But it was England that then objected as she 
had done in 1830. In the end, Crete was again forced 
under the heel of Turkey for another generation. 



246 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

To a decision so iniquitous the Cretans could not long 
submit. They rose again in 1878, again proclaimed union 
to Greece, and again defeated the Turks. But some of 
the Powers intervened and brought about an armistice 
favorable to the hard-pressed Turks, who availed them- 
selves of the opportunity thus furnished them to land more 
troops in the island and to violate the truce by attacking 
the insurgents. 

A fresh insurrection broke out in 1889, when union to 
Greece was again proclaimed, but unavailingly. 

The recent Cretan revolt is the eighth since 1821. 

It is plain that nothing short of union with Greece will 
satisfy the Cretans. M. Gennadius, in closing his article, 
expresses what is the prevailing and undying sentiment 
of the Cretan people, so often voiced by themselves. 

" Nothing short of union will or can satisfy a people who for seven 
centuries battled for liberty undaunted, who for three generations 
bled for union unexhausted ; but who, standing in a land bathed in 
rivers of blood, soaked in ceaseless tears, black with fire, hacked by 
the sword, re-echoing with wailing and woe, witness how these same 
footprints of tyranny have fast disappeared with the Turk from the 
mainland opposite." 

II. The Ikteryen'tion' of Geeece, ai^d the Coistduct 

OF THE POWEES. 

For so many years and in such great numbers have refu- 
gees from Turkish compressions in the island of Crete 
crowded to the protecting arms of Greece, her- 

..^^^^°^ ^^^„ self hospitable but poor, that the latest arri- 
" the Powers." ^ ^ ' 

vals decided that power to take some step 
toward the liberation of the valorous island from the sway 
of the Turk. Emboldened by immunity from j)unishment 
for his successive Armenian massacres, culminating in 
the uninterrupted slaughter at Constantinople, immedi- 
ately under the eyes of the six Powers who were there 
represented by their Ambassadors, the Sultan concluded 



LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERN QUESTION. 247 

to fall upon the Cretan Christians with fire and sword in 
order to keep flowing into his cormorant-surrounded 
treasury the money needful to sustain his throne. Against 
this atrocity Greece protested, in the name of civilization 
and of common humanity, but her practical intervention 
was crippled and stayed by that " Concert " whose uniform 
promotion of the Sultan's diabolical schemes of slaughter 
and robbery will stand for all time as a sample of ignominy. 
No sooner had Greece declared her intention of protecting 
the Cretans from massacre than the Great Powers flocked to 
her waters and jointly protested against interference with 
the Sultan's movements. If the Powers had not neglected 
or refused to execute in Crete the ^^ reforms" that had 
been promised, the Sultan would not have dared to fall 
upon Crete as he did upon Armenia. Their selfishness, 
cowardice, perfidy, indecision — or however their action 
may be characterized — invited the Sultan to the step which 
he boldly took. 

The Cretans appealed to Greece, and Hellenic blood 
courageously responded to their cry. Greece proposed to 
restore and maintain order in the island, since 
no other power would do so, and that the Cre- .■^p^*^^°^^„ 
tans should be permitted to choose a Prince 
who should rule in Crete under suzerainty of the Porte. 
The Powers put their heads together and objected. Then 
Greece sent an army of occupation into Crete, to restore 
order and pave the way for Cretan annexation to Greece — 
a consummation desired by nearly all the Cretans. The 
Powers again objected, and demanded the withdrawal of 
the Greek forces, which demand not being complied with, 
and the offer of the Greeks to withdraw simultaneously 
with the Turks being ignored, the assembled Powers pro- 
ceeded to give aid and comfort to the Turk, and to assist 
in the persecution of the Christians. Crete was blockaded. 
The ships of the Powers fired upon Christians, and re- 
frained from firing upon Turks, even when the latter were 



248 THE CEIME OF CHEIGTENDOM. 

violating flags of truce. Tlie blockade of Crete was against 
all nations but the Turks, who were permitted to maneuver 
their own war-ships and troops at will. The Powers even 
threatened to blockade Greece herself, and then menaced 
the Greek troops on the border. When the Greeks agreed 
to let some Moslems besieged at Kandamos go free if they 
would give up their arms, the Powers treacherously con- 
nived at letting the Moslems keep their arms for further 
Christian butchery. 

The Powers, in Justification of this blockade, prated 
about " the integrity of the Turkish Empire." Mr. Glad- 
stone, in his impassioned letter to the Duke 

"Integrity of ^f AVcstminster, written at Cannes, March 13, 
the Empire. , . . • ,, 

had something to say about this " nitegrity. 

These are a part of his Avords : 

" It shows an amazing courage or an amazing infatuation tliat after 
a mass of experience, alike deplorable and conclusive, the rent and 
ragged catchword of ' integrity of tlie Ottoman Empire ' should still 
he flaunted in our eyes. Has it then a meaning ? Yes, and it had a 
different meaning in almost every decade of tlie century now expir- 
ing. In the first quarter of that century it meant that Turkey, 
though her system was poisoned and effete, still occupied in right of 
actual sovereignty the whole southeastern corner of Europe, ap- 
pointed by the Almighty to be one of its choicest portions. In 1830 
it meant that this baleful sovereignty had been abridged by the ex- 
cision of Greece from Turkish territory, In 18G0 it meant that the 
Danubian principalities, now forming the Kingdom of Eoumania, 
had obtained an emancipation virtually, as it is now formally, com- 
plete. In 1878 it meant that Bosnia, with Herzegovina, had bid fare- 
well to all active concern with Turkey ; tliat Servia was enlarged and 
that northern Bulgaria was free. In 1880 it meant that Montenegro 
had crowned its glorious battle of 400 years by achieving acknowledg- 
ment of its independence and obtaining great accession of territory, 
and tliat Thessaly was added to free Greece. In 1886 it meant that 
southern Bulgaria had been permitted to associate itself with its 
northern sisters. 

" What is the upshot of all this ? That 18,000,000 of human beings 
Avho a century ago, peopling a large part of the Turkish empire, were 
subject to its at once paralyzing and degrading yoke are now as free 
from it as if they were inhabitants of these islands, and that Greece, 



LATEST PHASE OP THE EASTERN QtTESTION. 249 

Eoumania, Servia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria stand before us as five 
living witnesses that, even in this world, reign of wrong is not eter- 
nal. But still it is dinned in our ears from the presses, and indeed 
from the thrones, of a continent, that we must not allow our regard 
for justice, humanity, and freedom of life and honor to bring into 
question or put to hazard the ' integrity of the Ottoman Empire !'" 

There is much in this letter of Mr. Gladstone that might 
pertinently be quoted here, as for example where he objects 
to the sight of England ^''pinned ^' to the '' aprons " of 
"two young men" — the Emperor of Germany and the 
Czar of Enssia. On this point he says : 

"At this moment two great States, with a European population of 
one hundred and forty or perhaps one hundred and fifty millions, are 
under the Government of two young men, each bearing the high title 
of Emperor, but in one case wholly without knowledge or experience : 
in the other, having only such knowledge and experience, in truth 
limited enough, as have excited much astonishment and some con- 
sternation when an inkling of them has been given to the world. In 
one case the Government is a pure and perfect despotism, and in the 
other equivalent to it in matters of foreign policy, so far as it can be 
understood in a land where freedom is indigenous, familiar, and full 
grown. These powers, so far as their sentiments are known, have 
been using their power in the concert to fight steadily against free- 
dom. But why are we to have our Government pinned to their 
aprons?" 

Mr. Gladstone's tribute to the courage of Greece is one 
of the most notable parts of this historic letter. Referring 
to Greece as " a power representing the race that fought 
the battles of Thermopylge and Salamis and hurled back 
the hordes of Asia from European shores," he goes on to 
say: 

"Nor is Greece so easily disposed of as might have been antici- 
pated ; and what the world needs to understand is this : that there is 
life in the Cretan matter, that this life has been infused into it exclu- 
sively by Grecian action, and that if, under the merciful providence 
of God and by paths which it is hard as yet to trace, the island is to 
find her liberation, that inestimable boon will be owing, not to any 
of the great Governments of Europe, for they are paralyzed by dissen- 
sion, nor even to any of the great peoples of Europe, for the door is 



250 THE CKIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

shut in their faces by the ' concert of Europe,' but to the small and 
physically insignificant race known as the Greeks. Whatever good 
shall be permitted to emerge from the existing chaos will lie to their 
credit and to theirs alone. 

"Is it to be wondered at that Greece should have endeavored to 
give aid to the Cretans ? As often as they rise in rebellion and their 
efforts, due to Turkish blindness and bad faith, are encountered by 
lawless cruelty, they fly in crowds to Greece, which is their only 
refuge ; and that poor country has to stand and stand alone between 
them and starvation. As to their Turkish masters, it is not to be ex- 
pected that they should find any cause for uneasiness in such a state 
of things, for ever since that evil day, the darkest perhaps in the 
whole known history of liumanity, when their star reeking with gore 
rose above the liorizon, has it not been their policy and constant aim 
to depopulate the regions which they ruled ? The title of Turkey 
de jure is, in truth, given up on all hands. In the meagre catalogue 
of things which the six united powers have done, there is this, at 
least, included, that they have taken out of the hands of the Sultan 
the care and administration of the island." 

In closing liis remarkable utterance Mr. Gladstone ob- 
serves that Greece has by her bold action conferred a great 
service upon Europe. "She has," he says, "made it im- 
possible to palter with this question as we paltered with the 
bloodstained question of Armenia. She has extricated it 
from the meshes of diplomacy and placed it on the order 
of the day for definitive solution." 

It is not possible here to give the details of the Grseco- 

Turkish War, but a glance at the historical movement of 

the past bwenty years will help to understand 

--, . the present situation and to appreciate the 
responsibilities of the Powers chiefly interested. 

At the close of the Eusso-Turkish War in 1878 the 
Russian Army, at immense cost of blood and treasure, was 
at the gates of Constantinople, having arranged in the 
Treaty of San Stefano to give freedom and protection to 
all the Christians under Turkish rule. The British Govern- 
ment under lead of Lord Beaconsfield ordered its navy to 
Constantinople to save the Turkish Empire. Russia and 
England reached a compromise, by which the latter agreed 



LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERN QUESTION". 251 

not to i)ass the Dardanelles if tlie former would not enter 
Constantinople. Then Beaconsfield proceeded with the 
help of Bismarck to force Russia into the Congress of 
Berlin in order to overturn the beneficent arrangements 
of San StefanO;, making in the meantime his iniquitous 
secret compacts with Eussia and Turkey. Great Britain, 
Turkey (as one of the Powers), Germany, France, Austria, 
Italy and Russia met at Berlin, and under lead of Beacons- 
field set to the work of undoing so much as might be of 
what had been done at such immense cost. 

It was not possible to undo all the good work. Rou- 
mania, Servia and Montenegro were made independent. 
To Bulgaria was granted autonomy, but with straitened 
limits. Administrative autonomy was promised to Eastern 
Roumelia which Russia had proposed to add to Bulgaria. 
To Austro-Hungary were handed over Bosnia and Herze- 
govina where the insurrections and movement for freedom 
had originated. In spite of the sacred doctrine of " the in- 
tegrity of the Ottoman Empire " all the Slavic provinces 
were thus taken from under the Turkish robber and butcher, 
and entered at once upon a remarkable career of progress 
and prosperity. Ardahan, Kars and Batum with other 
portions of the northern slope of the Great Armenian 
Plateau in Asiatic Turkey were ceded to Russia and have 
since been most wonderfully transformed. So much of 
permanent advance in the condition and freedom of the 
Christians was secured in these broad regions where the 
Turks had formed but a handful of the peoples. 

But much of the beneficent work of Russia was rendered 
nugatory. The Armenians outside of Transcaucasia were 
remanded to slavery. Russia in the Treaty of San Stefano 
had made the only effective provision for their protection, 
that of a military police to inaugurate and carry out an 
adequate S3^stem of administrative reforms. Beaconsfield 
and Salisbury secured the abrogation of this feature and 
the substitution for it of the mere promise of the Turh — en- 



252 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM:. 

tirely apart from the Treaty — to institute reforms, for the 
carrying out of which they as the representatives of Great 
Britain became sole surety. "With Cyprus in hand as a 
pledge for the maintenance of ^''the integrity of the Otto- 
man Empire/^ and with the pledge on record in the Treaty 
of Berlin for the institution of reforms and the protection 
of the Armenians, the British Government did absolutely 
nothing for fifteen long years except to anger Turkey by the 
stealing of Egypt and the Soudan ! Tlie Armenian pliase 
of the Eastern Question was the first logical outcome of 
such a policy, the responsibility for which it is easy to fix. 
Three years of butcheries the most horrible — taking their 
accessories and concomitants into the account — in the 
annals of the race. Great Britain permitted Abd-ul-Hamid 
to perpetrate without so much as an honest attempt to re- 
deem her pledge of protection to the Armenian Christians ! 
The other European Powers, which for British interests 
had been brushed out of the way of Great Britain by 
Beaconsfield's masterpiece of diplomacy at Berlin, of course 
looked helplessly on or uttered ineffectual mutterings 
while the extermination of a noble Christian people was 
]3ushed with fanatical and relentless hate. Abd-ul-Hamid 
— single-handed against the world — seems to have come 
very near to settling the Armenian Question, and Lord 
Salisbury has been left to exult — in his recent speech at 
the Primrose League in Albert Hall — in "the peaceful 
ascendency of England in the councils of the world,^^ as 
the outcome of the "Peace with Honor ^^ business!^ 
Hideous boast in view of the Armenian massacres ! 

But the destruction of the Armenians was only the be- 
ginning of Lord Beaconsfield^s deft work of diplomacy in 
nullifying the beneficent results of the Eussian rescue of 
the Christians from Turkish oppression. The Hellenic 
peoples of Turkey were handed back to the tender mercies 
of the Moslem butcher, and the way thus prepared for the 
1 See The Spectator, May 8, 1897, p. 646. 



LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERN QUESTION. 253 

latest Greek phase of the Eastern Question, the one here 
under consideration. By the terms of San Stefano, to the 
Hellenic belt of Turkey was practically to be given auton- 
omy, while reforms were to be insured for Crete and the 
other islands of the ^gean, and protection for the numer- 
ous Greek Christians elsewhere over the Empire, especially 
in the seaports of Asia Minor. All this was overturned 
or rendered nugatory by the Treaty of Berlin. The 
Hellenic belt was turned over to the Turk with the under- 
standing that the Commission having on hand the settle- 
ment of the Balkan affairs should afterward consider its 
needs ; but the Commission dissolved without so much as 
a thought on the subject, and the Turkish tithe-farmer 
still plies his vocation and terrorizes all this fair and 
historic region. The Greeks of the coasts have received 
nothing except through Turkish dread of the Greek and 
European navies. The reforms promised by the Turk and 
assured by Great Britain and the other Powers, to the 
Greek islands, and particularly to Crete, have been granted 
— as already seen — only on paper, and the Sultan has been 
allowed, even under the shadow of his own Trades, to op- 
press and rob and butcher as of old. 

The present Greeh phase of the Eastern Question — which, 
it is well to understand, has barely entered upon its be- 
ginning, and the final magnitude of the results of which it 
is not easy to imagine or forecast — is the logical outcome 
of this state of things. It is not the fate of Crete only 
that the Greek saw to be involved, but the fate of the Greeh 
Fate of race, of which Greece is but a part. And 
Greeks. what that fate would be the Greek learned 
from the lurid light from blackened and perishing Armenia. 
In the oppression in Crete and elsewhere the Turk had 
broken the Treaty of Berlin and forfeited all rights under 
it, including that to "the integrity" of his Em^Dire. 
The Powers muttered at his violations of the Treaty, but 
did not enforce its terms. Greece saw the disaster to the 



254 THE CRIME OE CHKISTEKDOM. 

Greek race coming, and in her despairing hope ventured 
to aid the Christians in Crete in securing the terms of the 
Treaty. The Powers allowed the Turkish army free ac- 
cess to Crete and defended the Cretan Mohammedans in 
their work of butchering the Christians, while they shut 
out the Greek army and navy. Their navies fired on the 
Cretan Christians wantonly and without provocation. 
They urged on Turkey to fight Greece, and then, leaving 
Turkey to free action under leadership of their own army 
and naval experts and officers, they put Greece in a strait- 
jacket by hampering her navy and threatening to blockade 
her ports. The Concert of Europe thereby made full pro- 
vision for overwhelming and crushing Greece through the 
superior numbers and discipline of the Turkish Army. It 
was its purpose to humble Greece and to check the ad- 
vancing spirit of freedom in Southeastern Europe. The 
British Government might have interfered — ought to have 
interfered — in behalf of the Cretan and Greek Christians ; 
but so far as it took part at all it was mainly on the wrong 
side. As Dr. Albert Shaw has said : ^ 

" The British Government could not afford to make any honest ex- 
ertion in behalf of the true solution of the question between Greece 
and Turkey, because there was ' nothing in it for England.' Nothing 
was involved for England, indeed, except honor and international 
morality and good faith." 

Unfortunately, in the Beaconsfield-Salisbury diplomacy, 
such purely sentimental factors count for nothing against 
substantial "British interests," and the appeals of the noblest 
Christians of the British Empire again went unheeded ! 

But slight direct outcome from the war could be ex- 
pected under such conditions, especially when the fact is 
noted that the vast military forces of Turkey had been 
equipped with the aid of the money, and organized and 
trained by the best military skill, of Christian Europe. 
The possible indirect outcome — from the moral influence 

1 The Review of Eeviews, June, 1897, p. 654. 



LATEST PHASE OF THE EASTERN QUESTION. 255 

as an uprising in the interests of freedom and a protest 
against the climax of iniquity in European diplomacy, and 
from the political influence in breaking what had seemed 
a hopeless deadlock — is hardly to be grasped by the im- 
agination. 

In the circumstances it is impossible not to forecast as 
one of the possibilities the extension of this uprising, not 
only to all the Greek Christians of Turkey, but to the 
Slavic and others as well, later, if not sooner. Meanwhile, 
however, if the present policy of the Powers is to be con- 
tinued in spite of the protests of Christendom, the only 
outlook, apart from Providence, is toward an extermination 
or conversion of the Greek peoples, that shall duplicate the 
experience of Armenia, and in which the revolt in Crete 
and the war in Greece are but opening incidents. That, 
almost in spite of the Powers, Crete has been redeemed 
by Prince George, in one year, after twenty centuries of 
war and misrule, is one more practical proof that the out- 
look of the suffering Christians of Turkey is not to be 
" apart from Providence." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, AND EESPONSIBILITIES. 

In drawing this discussion to a close, the present situa- 
tion and outlook may be summarized by the statement of 
some conclusions that have been reached and established, 
and of some of the possibilities that are fairly before the 
mind of Christendom. 

I. Some Established Conclusions. 

Although the forecasting of the immediate outcome of 
the present crisis must baffle human ingenuity, there are 
certain conclusions that have been irreversibly established 
by the logic of events. Some of these need to be briefly 
stated. 

(I.) The Eailuee of Diplomacy. 

The futility and iniquity of diplomacy as a means of 
solving the Eastern Question have been established beyond 
dispute. The spectacle of the European political game of 
the century has been one of such hideous immorality and 
inhumanity that it would be difficult if not impossible 
to parallel it among heathen or barbarous nations of this 
or any past century. It is natural, therefore, that the 
ignominious failure of the diplomacy of the so-called 
Christian nations — that have usually misrepresented the 
sentiment of the peoples and oftener defied and balked 
them in their desire to deliver the Christians in Turkey — 

256 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 257 

should have led unofficial Christendom to agreement in the 
conclusion that it is time to have done with it. 

Nothing could be clearer than that the Machiavelian 
spirit has controlled the game of European diplomacy. 
Not to go further back^, all through the present century it 
constitutes an inexplicable tangle due to treacheries in- 
numerable, jealousies interminable, and selfishness incom- 
prehensible. The interests of the millions of oppressed 
Christians have always been subordinated to the self-interest 
of the political tricksters in all the deft and 

long-drawn-out movements of the game. Th^^^^e of 

° . '=' Diplomacy. 

England's jealousy of Russia has repeatedly 

blocked the way to Christian deliverance and freedom, as 
in the settlement of the boundaries of Greece, in the 
Crimean war, in the Congress of Berlin, and in the 
uprising of the Cretans. She must intrigue and intrigue 
for her double route to India and for British interests in 
general and for British interest in particular. Germany 
and Austria want Turkey in Europe for their own selfish 
ends, and so are always ready to help block the way of 
Russia who has thus far been the only helper and deliverer 
of these oppressed Christians. France wants to checkmate 
the moves of Great Britain, and to extend her own sphere 
of influence and her domain. Russia, having come to the 
rescue repeatedly at immense cost of blood and treasure, 
hesitates to hazard the same fate again, secure in the fore- 
sight of the ultimate accomplishment of her plans in the 
Orient. And so the game has continued one succession of 
blocks and draws, until Christendom is weary with it and 
of it. No language can express adequately the horror and 
moral aversion with which she regards the iniquities and 
crimes of her rulers perpetrated in her name, or her moral 
loathing of the methods by which they have compassed 
their ends. She shudders as if the blood-guilt were her 
own, brought about by her rulers, though brought about 
almost in spite of her. 
17 



258 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Moreover the point has now been reached where the 

game — if kept up — must become still more complicated. 

The Powers must continue to guarantee the 

^"rSer* Bonds held by the European Shylocks, in Lon- 
don, Paris, and Berlin ; for has not their action 
led to the contracting of the debt secured by the Bonds ? 
Though already scaled down further scaling threatens to 
become necessary. The Shylocks are going to press the 
Powers, and the Powers to increase the pressure upon Tur- 
key, The massacres and confiscations of the last three years 
have practically exhausted the Christian sources of Turkish 
revenue in the remoter provinces, and brought the Empire 
to the verge of bankruptcy. That will make greater pres- 
sure for revenue necessary, and that will lead if possible 
to greater atrocities in securing so-called '' taxes ^' from 
the poorer Christian subjects of Turkey still left alive. 
That is what has brought down the pressure upon the 
people of Crete. That must extend the work of the 
Turkish tax-gatherer — with all its diabolical features, cul- 
minating in the hospitality tax — to the Macedonian belt and 
to every other portion of Turkey in which there are Chris- 
tians, especially Greek Christians, residing. All that will 
inevitably lead to more protests, and a long line of succes- 
sive Hatts — each more impotent and iniquitous than its pre- 
decessors — until the Christians of the Turkish Empire shall 
cease to have a name. That is the outlook for diplomacy. 

The Irades — issued late in October, 1896 — ordering a 
" poll-tax of five piastres (twenty cents) per head upon 
the Mohammedan population of Turkey," and " an in- 
crease in the tithes upon sheep and in certain taxes " — are 
a clear indication of the conviction of the Porte that the 
Christian sources of revenue have neared the point of ex- 
haustion, and that henceforth its Mussulman subjects must 
be drawn upon as well, for the support of the harem in 
the palace of Yildiz Kiosk, where the Great Butcher holds 
his carnival of lust, and whence he issues his orders for 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 259 

keeping wp the carnival of crime over liis Empire. It 
thus becomes apparent that, compared with the complica- 
tions of the present and the future;, those of the diplo- 
macy of the past have been as nothing ; so that the out- 
look for future relief from this source is absolutely hopeless. 
Diplomacy has exhausted itself and is at a deadlock. 

It cannot be denied that England is primarily respon- 
sible for the present deadlock. As her own leading jour- 
nals have freely acknowledged, her dujolicity and treachery 
have left her Avithout a friend among the European Powers. 
France hates her because she will not honestly settle the 
Egyptian difficulty. All the other nations distrust her 
because, while repudiating the obligation of the Conven- 
tion of Cyprus to protect the Armenians, she still retains 
Cyprus, instead of giving it up to be governed by the 
Powers. Russia has special reason to mistrust her, for the 
Czar is well aware that her sole aim in delaying the Sick 
Man's dying has been to shut out the Russians from the 
Mediterranean Sea, by establishing an independent prin- 
cipality between that and the Black Sea. The Armenians 
distrust her, for she has pitilessly betrayed them and re- 
manded more than a million of them to Turkish slavery, 
half of whom are dying in prison or from terror and starv- 
ation. In recounting the experiences of his people an 
Armenian writer, M. H. Gulesian, despairing of aid from 
England, turns to Russia, which he rightly declares to be 
" the only country that will help us without first thinking 
' What shall we get out of the transaction ? ' " He adds : ^ 

"We remember Russia's noble act eighteen years ago, when our 
Patriarch Nerses with other Armenians went to the camp of the 
Grand Duke and begged him to do something in the name of God 
and humanity. The Russians then and there had pity and compas- 
sion, and inserted the following clause in the Treaty of San Stefano: 
' Russia will keep her armies in Armenia imtil the reforms are car- 
ried out.' That was the only practical way of giving the Armenians 

1 England's Hand in Turkish Massacres. The Arena, January, 
1897. 



260 THE CEIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

any aid, and Russia knew it, and England knew it ; yet it was this 
very Lord Salisbury who insisted that this clause he erased. On the 
other hand, in spite of England's solemn responsibility and in spite 
of the hundreds of petitions and prayers we have sent to her, she has 
turned a deaf ear, even when Mr. Gladstone was in power." 

The Christian people of Grreat Britain herself have no 
faith in her principles, nay, rather, they utterly repudiate 
them as base and inhuman. Says Canon MacColl ^ — agree- 
ing in this with the Duke of Argyll : 

"We have insensibly slipped into the atrocious doctrine that it is 
for our own individual interests, as a nation, to maintain the exe- 
crable government of Turkey over its subject millions, at whatever 
cost of misery to them. , . . The proved incorrigibility of the 
Turkish government is to be no bar to our continued political sup- 
port, and that the massacres from time to time of thousands of men, 
women and children are, in comparison with our own political in- 
terests, as nothing in the balance. This, and nothing else than this, 
is the wicked and really infamous doctrine into which we have 
lapsed." 

All this demonstration of the dominancy of the robber 
morality has made it impossible that there should be any 
Concert of Europe in delivering the Christians from the 
oppression of the Sultan. What is more, it must continue 
to bar any effective unity of action on the part of the 
Powers or of the Christian peoples. The deadlock is a 
hopeless one. 

(II.) HOPELESSliJ"ESS FEOM THE Ooiq-CEET OE EuEOPE. 

'' The Concert of Europe " has for a time been promi- 
nently before the world as the latest phase of diplomacy 
and best illustrates its futility. It has been 
Nature and (described in caricature by an English news- 
paper as " Three Despots, two Vassals, and a 
Coward. ^^ It not inaptly expresses the relation of the " Six 
Great Powers^' of Europe "to the Eastern Question. That 
question, from the point of view of righteousness, is the 

1 Our Eesponsibility for Armenia. 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 261 

question of the dissolution of the Turkish Empire. They 
have been pretending to make it the question of " the in- 
tegrity of Turkey.^' A recent writer has attempted to set 
forth the nature and aims of tliis agency.^ He asks and 
answers a question : 

"What is the Concert of Europe ? It is not a treaty, still less a 
federation. If it is anything, it is a tacit understanding between the 
'Six Powers' that they will take common action, or abstain from 
' isolated action,' in the Eastern Question. Whether it is even that, 
in any rational sense of the word ' understanding,' is more than 
doubtful. For there has been much and very grave ' isolated action,' 
even in pending troubles." 

Tliis writer proceeds to show how the constantly re- 
peated '' isolated action ^^ practically negatives the theory 
that the Concert is an "understanding " in any real sense : 
in the Avar between Turkey and Greece the Kaiser has of 
his OAvn motion supplied one of the two belligerents — the 
Turks — with ' ' first-class strategists ; " before the opening 
of the war Germany and Russia independently " pressed 
the Sultan to mass 200,000 men in the Balkan provinces ; " 
England took "isolated action" regarding Cyprus and 
Egypt ; France and Italy act independently regarding the 
other African provinces of Turkey ; Russia on her own 
responsibility tore up the Treaty of Paris that placed a 
veto on her naval power, and engaged in and carried 
through the war of 1877-78 ; England acted against Europe 
in vetoing the Treaty of San Stefano and substituting the 
Treaty of Berlin. Practically the Concert has held mainly 
in inaction, while " action " as a rule has been " isolated." 

But the helplessness of the Concert has not been by any 
means its worst defect. It has been used — is being used — 
as the agency of despotism buttressed by 
militarism, in preventing justice and freedom. Failure. 
Says another able writer, ^ writing from Con- 

1 Contemporary Eeview, The Concert of Europe, May, 1897, p. 610. 

2 Contemporary Review^ The Sultan and 1;he Powers, May, 1897, p. 



2'62 THE CRIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

stantinople in the midst of exciting events (April 16, 
1897) : 

"Nothing could be more ideally perfect than a federation of the 
Great Powers of Europe to secure peace, harmony, and justice in the 
world. The Holy Alliance was an attempt to realize this ideal. The 
Pope has suggested that he would be the proper head of such a fed- 
eration, and Mr. Stead suggests the Kaiser. Perhaps the Sultan 
would be willing to accept the place ! The fact is that no such ideal 
can be realized in the present state of Europe, and to speak of the ex- 
isting Concert of Europe as such an ideal is to play with words. It is 
very far from it. Still it is not to be condemned on that account. If 
it were an honest attempt to secure peace in Europe and the East and 
good government — if it attained these ends — it would matter little 
that it was a rough, imperfect instrument. If it did this Avork, all 
the world would be content. Those who condemn it do so on the 
ground that either it is not honest, or that it is too cumbrous a 
machine to work any good to any one, or that thus far it has helped 
nobody but the Sultan. It has stood between him and the outraged 
public sentiment of Europe and America, has prevented any active 
interference with his plans, and has used its mighty power only 
against Greece and the Christian people of Crete." 

These are heavy counts, but they are readily established. 
The Concert in its more recent form "was born of the 
Sassun massacres, and in its embryo state was 
Phase ^^^ understandmg between England, France, 
and Russia that they would investigate these 
massacres and prepare a scheme of reforms which would 
protect the rights of the Armenians as provided in the 
Treaty of Berlin, the otlier three Powers agreeing to main- 
tain an attitude of benevolent neutrality." The investiga- 
tion of the Sassun massacres by the Turkish Commission 
was such a farce, and the work of the Commission of the 
Powers such a farce, that Italy withdrew with an indignant 
protest, and the entire scheme of the Concert collapsed, 
and the work of butchery was allowed to go on. When 
the Cretans, oppressed beyond endurance, rose in rebellion 
for the eighth time during the present century, the Concert 
supported the Turkish oppressors with their united navies, 
and carefully guarded against injuring a hair of their 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 263 

Moslem heads, but opened fire upon tlie insurgent Chris- 
tians, and, contrary to all humanity and all international 
law, undertook to hinder Greece from helping her kins- 
men in their struggle for liberty, and threatened her 
with blockade, and prevented the union of Crete with 
Greece. The iniquitous action in the case of Crete was 
ostensibly taken lest "the opening of the Macedonian 
question would set Europe by the ears " ; but, lo, the 
result of it is a Macedonian AVar, and possible, nay prob- 
able, consequences of untold evil. 

The present dreadful situation is all the legitimate out- 
come of the policy formulated and inaugurated by Beacons- 
field at Berlin, adopted and hallowed by Lord Salisbury, 
and defended and advocated by their followers in the 
English Government. The writer in The Contemporary 
Eeview puts the case strongly and truly, uncovering the 
sinister motives, the bald heartlessness, and the moral per- 
versity that characterize it : 

" For at Berlin there was consolidated — ' consecrated ' is the Minis- 
terial word — the startling theory that all the Great Powers Avere en- 
titled to safeguard their imaginary shares in the ' bankrupt stock ' of 
the Sultanate. To that end, they had a common interest in preserv- 
ing its ' integrity.' If it could be reformed without prejudice to that 
high purpose, the Christian Powers had no objection. But however 
urgent any particular case might be, no mere interest of a Christian 
population, and no doctrinaire idea that a just rebellion entitles 
such a population to sympathy and support was to be allowed to 
diminish the area of divisible goods, against the time when the heritage 
might come to be apportioned. The one ray of light which Mr. Curzon 
has thrown upon the present situation is his pithy enunciation of this 
principle ; and for that service he may be forgiven much that is de- 
plorable." 

But that is not all. At all times during these past years. 
Great Britain with her powerful navy has held the key to the 
situation, and by a word might have brought 
the Turk to terms, as Gladstone did years ago. Despotism, 
and not one of the European Powers would 
have made an objection. But instead of doing this Lord 



264 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Salisbury has insisted that she should "adhere to the 

Concert " in its inaction. She had bound herself by solemn 

treaty to utter that word and to make it eifective, but the 

man of " lath painted to resemble iron " stood in the way, 

and the result is a complete change in her position in 

Europe and before the world. She finds herself bound 

helplessly and ignominiously by the policy she herself 

formulated and " consecrated " for them, to the Drei- 

Kaiser-Bund, the Triple Alliance of the Kaisers, the most 

powerful alliance in the interests of despotism that Europe 

has ever witnessed. It looks like a case of speedy nemesis, 

although its results for the suffering Christians of Turkey 

must make " death and hell rejoice." 

But all these are only the less important matters. The 

worst results are the practical rehabilitation of Turkey and 

the Renaissance of Islam. The Sultan feels 
Results for the -, t p i i • 

Sultan. assured — and freely expresses his assurance — 

that his "policy" has been a triumjihant 
success. From the outset that policy has been to 
strengthen the Mohammedan element in Turkey and to 
revive the power and influence of the Caliphat. Thanks 
to British diplomacy, he has accomplished several tasks 
that, at the Treaty of San Stefano, would have seemed im- 
possible. 

Posing as the Caliph of Islam — although then regarded 
as a pretender — " the events of the past four years have 
stirred the hearts of Moslems all over the world and roused 
a new interest in the Caliphat of the Sultan." In Turkey 
things are at fever heat. They have " tasted blood and 
filled their houses with plunder," and they have "taken 
heart from the success of the Sultan." One writing from 
Constantinople shows how this has been brought about : 

" They had lost all faith in the ability of Turkey to resist the prog- 
ress of European civilization, and had no doubt that any attack upon 
the Christians would bring down upon them instant and terrible pun- 
ishment, But they have seen 10,000 Christians butchered in Constant 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, EESPONSIBILITIES. 265 

tinople under the very eyes of the Ambassadors without any unpleasant 
results. Not a man has been punished for it. To what can they at- 
tribute this amazing fact but to the power and wisdom of the Sultan? 
They believe that all Europe is trembling before him; they realise, as 
the Sultan himself does, that he is braving all Christendom; and that 
he has done it with impunity is enough to rouse the old spirit of Islam. 
This new born fanaticism meets us every day whenever we come in 
contact with the common people." 

The Sultan has rid himself of the two most dangerous 
Mohammedan elements of disaffection that he found in his 
Empire, — the old Pashas who objected to the rapid ac- 
cumulation of enormous fortunes by the favorites of the 
]3alace and to the alienation of Christian Europe, as de- 
structive to the Empire ; and the new school of young 
Turks who, with more or less of European education, were 
dreaming of Constitutional and Parliamentary government 
for Turkey. " The Sultan, feeling that both these classes 
were disaffected and dangerous, established a secret police 
and a system of espionage unequaled by anything in 
Europe, which has been so far successful in its work that 
the old Pashas are mostly in exile, and the younger mal- 
contents have mostly disappeared.''^ 

The Sultan has destroyed the power of the Christians in 
Armenia and in Asia Minor. A hundred thousand of 
them have been massacred. Many more than that number 
have died of exposure and starvation. A million and a 
half have been stripped of their property and means of 
livelihood, and "^what was, a few years ago, the most 
prosperous, progressive and influential community in 
Asiatic Turkey has been reduced to hopeless poverty and 
impotence." The millions of Christians all over Turkey 
have, as elsewhere stated, been terrorized. 

The Sultan has, with the aid of Christian money and 
Christian brains and Christian armament, rehabilitated 
Turkey as a military power, so that the Empire is organ- 
ized and equipped and trained for war as never before in its 
history, from the Golden Horn to Epirus and to Mt. Ararat. 



266 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

In sliort, Abd-nl-Hamid lias apparently come very near 
to bringing about the Renaissance of Islam. For more 
than half a century England coddled the Sick Man, in 
order to use him in preventing Russia, the largest empire 
in Europe, from ever obtaining a free port. She gave him 
respectability and prestige as one of the Powers. That 
was thought to be rational politics ; but it has turned the 
tables and made the Turk feel that he is the arbiter of 
Europe. As one phrases it : " Europe is now a very 
magazine of terrors, and Abd-ul-Hamid holds the torch 
over the mine, and at the same time brains Greece." 
There are evidences that he has planned the extermina- 
tion of the Christians of his Empire, that he anticipates 
the re-awakening of the old spirit of Islam, and that he 
meditates the proclamation of a new jihad, or Holy War,- 
that shall embrace in its sweep the entire Mohammedan 
world. 

It looks very much as if the diplomatists that have 
brought all these things to pass through the Concert of 
Europe, might at an early day be called to witness the 
gathering of the hosts at Armageddon, and to see Europe 
and the world drenched in Christian blood in beating back 
the reinspirited hosts of Islam. 

There are just three hopeful features to the present out- 
look. The first is that everything depends 

HopeM upon Abd-ul-Hamid himself. Says the writer 
Features. r~i • -, 

from Constantmople : 

" The weakest point in the Sultan's position is that he has built up 
a structure which rests exclusively upon his own personality. If he 
were to die to-morrow it would fall to the ground. It is impossible 
that any successor should take up his work. When he dies there 
will be a tremendous reaction against this system, while all the ele- 
ments of confusion which he has introduced will remain active. The 
fanaticism which he has stirred up will not die with him. The Kurds 
and other wild tribes whom he has armed and patronized will be more 
lawless than ever. The administration which he has disorganized to 
concentrate it in the Palace will be left in confusion. It would not 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 267 

be strange if a period of anarchy sliould follow, which would neces- 
sitate foreign intervention. Tlie Sultan is personally stronger than 
ever to-day, but it is not to the advantage of his Empire." 

The second is that Great Britain may still hold the power 
to break the deadlock, by undertaking " isolated action/^ 
If she can only rid herself of the weak man at the helm, 
and bestir herself, she may yet escape in part the in- 
evitable retribution that would be all the sadder because it 
would be the scourge not only of England but of the 
world. TV ith the opening of the last two centuries England 
girded herself and asserted her military supremacy under 
Marlborough and Wellington for law and order. With 
the opening of the twentieth century may she- not rouse 
herself again to like task for Christendom and humanity ? 
In such an uprising she would doubtless have France and 
Italy with her in the end ; and she has the navy with 
which to sweep all seas. 

It may be true — as Lord Salisbury recently said — that 
" England with her fleet could only reach a little portion 
of the vast Turkish dominion ; " but the London Spectator 
appropriately replied : ^ " Very true, and a man with a 
bayonet can only reach a little portion of his foe, — only if 
that portion happens to be the heart, the thrust is usually 
sufficient ! " And the English navy could easily strike the 
heart of Turkey, Constantinople, and its heart of hearts, 
the person of the Sultan in his central palace there, and 
that, as elsewhere shown, would mean wreck to the Otto- 
man Empire.^ 

1 The Spectator, May 8, 1897, p. 646. 

2 The vulnerable character of the Turkish Empire is apparent from 
its absolute dependence upon the personality of Abd-ul-Hamid him- 
self. See p. 266. It is also well brought out in the latest work of 
Canon MacColl, " The Sultan and the Powers," in which (p. 304) 
the Canon says, referring to Armenia : 

"The troubles in Armenia have their root and cause in Tildiz 
Kiosk, and no great military force, or any military force at all, is 
needed to reach the author of the mischief. Any fleet in the world 



268 THE CEIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

The third hopeful feature is found in the possibilities of 
awakening public opinion. The Concert of Europe has 
stood dead against public opinion and shielded the Sultan 
from it. Abd-ul-Haniid appreciates this. A resident of 
Constantinople, already quoted, writes : -^ 

" Public opinion in Christendom condemns his policy as that of a 
madman or a bloodthirsty tyrant. It resents his treatment of his 
Christian subjects, and honestly sympathises with his Turkish 
victims. It believes that he is hastening the inevitable destruction 
of his Empire, and it demands that he be deposed or put under 
restraint. No one knows this better than the Sultan himself. He 
talks about it with every European whom he sees. It is the one 
thing which he fears and finds beyond his direct control, but he has 
spared no pains to influence it in his favor. But public opinion is 
powerless unless it finds expression in the acts of governments. Be- 
tween public opinion and the Sultan stands what is known as the 
Concert of Europe, and it has been to the maniijulation of this that 
his matchless diplomatic cleverness has been chiefly directed." 

The Powers taking refuge in the Concert have disregarded 
public opinion, and have thwarted all the efforts of the 
Ambassadors at Constantinople who have been more or less 
amenable to it. Christian England alone has the power to 
break the spell, which can be done by making the senti- 
ment for right and humanity, in connection with the 
Eastern Question, so overwhelming as to sweep the Gov- 
ernment before it. That would sweep America and France, 
and ultimately all Christendom before it, and bring the 
dawn of freedom for the millions of enslaved Christians 
that are now so wretched and hopeless. 

One thing is certain, and that is that the time is already 
fully come for Christendom to have done with such diplo- 
macy and with such Concert of Europe. Every hour of 

can do it, even the smallest ; for it may be done even without passing 
the Dardanelles. There is no Government in the world so vulnerable 
by sea as the Ottoman Porte. It is exposed in scores of places to a 
naval occupation without any power of resistance, for the Sultan has 
no navy." 

1 The Contemporary Eeview, May, 1897, p. 625. 



CONCLtTSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, BESPONSIBILITIES. 269 

delay deepens the peril and increases the risk of being too 
late. 

(III.) Demonstrated Impossibility of Eeform by the 

Turk. 

There is at the present time an established consensus of 
intelligent Christendom that there is no possibility of 
reforming Turkey through the Turk. 

Two illustrious examples of failure in Turkish reform, 
undertaken by two Turks of genius — a genius inherited 
doubtless from Christian mothers — have already been cited, 
those of Selim III. at the close of last century, and of 
Mahmood II. at the opening of the present century.-^ The 
continued failure in attempted — or rather professed at- 
tempts at — reform has been noted by the way. 

A summary statement of the results of the three most 

marked of recent attempts will serve to emphasize the 

hopelessness of any helpful outcome from such 

The Three 
efforts. Three recent failures — each greater, Hatts. 

and in its results more terrible, than the last — 
have shown the impossibility of Turkish reform from 
within, even when accompanied by substantial pressure 
from without. 

On N"ovember 3, 1839, Abd-ul-Medjid, through the in- 
fluence of his minister, Redjid Pasha, in order to strengthen 
his empire that then seemed on the verge of 

dissolution, issued the Hatt-i-Sheriff of Gul- k'^^l^.^*oo ' 
^ . . Sheriff, 1839. 

hane, ostensibly granting on paper full and 
entire liberty and religious and social equality to the 
Christian subjects of the Sultan. It was really a specious 
device to bring the Empire into connection with the so- 
called liberal Powers of Europe and thereby to strengthen 
it against Russia. The Old Turks fought it to the death, 
and it accomplished nothing for freedom, however much 
it did toward carrying Great Britain and France into the 
' See p. 22. 



270 THE CRIME OE CHRISTENDOM. 

Crimean "War and rendering certain all the butclieries that 
have since occurred, for which those two Powers thus 
became chiefly and guiltily responsible. 

The absolute failure of the Turk to carry out the prom- 
ises of the Hatt-i- Sheriff led the European Powers, after 
the Crimean war, to bring renewed pressure 
^of 1856 * ^^ ^®^^ npon Turkey — now by the consum- 
mated iniquity of that War one of themselves 
— to institute such reforms as would make existence toler- 
able for her Christian sabjects. That pressure resulted in 
the Hatt-i-Humayoun of February 18, 1856, which " con- 
firmed and consolidated " the promises of the older docu- 
ment of 1839. In order to make the Great Powers doubly 
sure that reform had come at last, Fuad Pasha addressed 
a document to them, in which in high-sounding phrase he 
says : ^ 

" The Imperial Firman of February 18, 1856, is only the confirma- 
tion and development of the Act of Gulhane, which solemnly decreed 
the regime of equality and opened the era of reform in the Ottoman 
Empire. . . . But the Act of Gulhane was by itself merely the 
acknowledgment of a right and the promise of a reform which might 
remain barren. The time has come for converting promises into 
facts — in other words, for introducing them into the institutions of 
the country." 

That would seem to have insured the fulfillment of the 
pledge of the Hatt-i-Sheriif, in words at least ; but it did 
not do so in fact. The promise of religious liberty is so 
craftily worded in the document as absolutely to nullify 
itself. Here is the most important clause of concession 
regarding building, etc., for religious purposes : 

" In the towns, small boroughs, and villages where the whole popu- 
lation is of the same religion^ no obstacles may be offered to repair, 
according to their original plan, of buildings set apart for religious 
worship, for schools, for hospitals, and for cemeteries." 

The italicized clauses contain the practical nullification 
1 MacColl, The Eastern Question, p. 99. 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, KESPONSIBILITIES. 271 

of the concessions, for, in the first place, there are really 

no such exclusively Christian communities in 

Turkey ; and, in the second place, if there Self-Nulli- 

were, the conditions involved in rebuilding, 

enlarging or changing of sites are such as to render the 

work impracticable. 

Here is the core of the concession of freedom of religion 
and worship, depending upon the same never-existing 
condition of things : 

"Each community in a locality ivhere there is no other denomina- 
tion shall be free from every species of restraint as regards the public 
exercise of its religion." 

It follows, of course, that in all communities composed 
partly of Mussulmans and partly of Christians — that is, in 
all communities in Turkey — the ordinary re- 
strictions of the Koran are in full force, ^^f^^, ^^^ 

of Islam. 

Among these restrictions, taken from the 
Multeka, are the following, which are quoted from Canon 
MacColl, in order to make clear the quality of religious 
liberty in Turkey under this most famous Hatt : ^ 

" It is not lawful for Christians or Jews to build churches or con- 
vents in our land, nor for the Magii to build temples for fire-worship. 
They are also forbidden to trade in wine or swine. They are allowed 
to repair old churches which are in ruins, but they must do this with 
the old material, in the same place, and without any additions. It 
is not lawful for them to sound bells, except inside of their churches, 
and so gently that they shall not be heard outside. They are not 
allowed to dwell among Moslems in the same city ; but they must 
live in a special quarter by themselves, where no Moslems reside. 
Should any of them imrchase a house in the Moslem quarter, he can 
not be permitted to occupy it, but must sell it. Moreover, the 
Christian must be distinguished from the Moslem by his dress, the 
animal he rides, and its saddle. He is not allowed to ride upon 
horses or camels, bnt he may ride upon donkeys and mules. lie is 
not permitted to use arms or to wear them. In public he must always 
wear the kosteef (a narrow strip outside his dress) to distinguish him 
from the Moslems. He is not allowed even to ride on a donkey ex- 

1 See MacColl, The Eastern Question, pp. 101-3. 



272 THE CRIME OE CSBlSTENDOM. 

cept in case of necessity, and then he must use a coarse cushion in 
place of a saddle, and he must dismount whenever he meets Moslems. 
. . . His dress must not be of rich cloth, such as silk or fine wool. 
His turban must be large, and of coarse black cotton. His shoes 
also must be of tlie coarsest quality to mark his degradation. His 
garments must be short, with the pockets on the breast, like those 
of a woman. He is forbidden to sit down in the presence of a 
Moslem who is standing. ... A Christian woman or female child 
must keep away from Moslems in the street and in the bath. They 
must walk on the side of tlie way to give room for the Moslem woman 
in the middle. The Christian must have a sign on his gate, so that 
beggars may not say, ' God bless you.' He must walk in the nar- 
rowest part of the way when he meets a Moslem. He must pay the 
tribute standing while the collector sits. When the collector takes 
the tribute from him he should treat him very harshly, as by shaking 
him, beating him on the breast , or even dragging him on the ground ; 
and should say to him at the same time , ' Give the tribute , O Dsimm i ; 
O enemy of Allah,' and this he shall do in order to degrade and dis- 
grace him. And if he should refuse to pay tribute, some say that he 
should be imprisoned and forced to pay ; but the majority of law 
authorities agree that he must be put to the sword or made a slave. 
Should he curse the Prophet (on whom be peace) , he is to be pun- 
ished according to his crime ; but should he do it openly and often, 
he must be burnt alive." 

. This is simply an accurate epitome of the provisions of 
Mohammedan law^ as governing the Turk in his dealings 
with the Christians in all the conditions that ever actually 
exist in the Turkish Empire. 

The following citation from Canon MacColl's book, pub- 
lished twenty years ago,^ makes abundantly clear the way 
the Turk has always had of evading the lying promises of 
the Hatt-i-Humayoun : 

" In a Blue Book on Religious Persecution in Turkey, published in 
1815, I find the following facts stated on the authority of Her 
Majesty's Ambassador and Consuls in Turkey, that tlie Porte 
'definitely refused ' to permit the establishment of Christian schools; 
that it prohibited the publication of the Bible in the Turkish lan- 
guage; and that, in direct violation of the Hatt-i-Humayoun, the 
children not only of Mussulmans, but even of heathen parents, can 

1 The Eastern Question, pp. 97, 98, published in 1877. 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, BESPONSIBILITIES. 273 

never be recognized as Christians, even if they have been baptized in 
infancy : ' The law did not recognize such men at all, but as Moham- 
medans ' — such is the answer made by the Grand Vizier to the British 
charge d'affaires on the 18th of May, 1874, and the latter found, on in- 
quiry, that the Grand Vizier was quite right.^ Does not this demon- 
strate the folly of trusting to any promises made by the Turkish 
Government in Hatts, or Firmans, or Trades ? Over them all is the 
Sacred Law of Islam, which ' altereth not,' and which, in every case 
of collision, must inevitably prevail. ' No one shall be constrained to 
change his religion,' says the Hatt-i-Humayoun. ' You are violating 
thellatt-i-Humayoun,' remonstrates Her BritannicMajesty's represen- 
tative at the Porte, ' for you are forcing Christians, by means of cruel 
tortures and threats of death, to conform to the Koran and attend 
the mosques.' 'Quite a mistake,' blandly replies the Grand Vizier; 
.' the persons you speak of are not Christians at all; they are Mussul- 
mans.' ' That proves nothing at all,' rejoins his Highness, 'for by 
the law of Turkey the children of non-Christian parents can never 
become Christians.' ' That is an evasion of the Hatt-i-Humayoun,' 
retorts the charge d'affaires,' for it promises complete religious liberty 
to all the Sultan's subjects.' The Grand Vizier shrugs his shoulders 
at the obtuseness of the Britisli intellect, and explains that any in- 
terpretation of the Hatt-i-Humayoun which would bring it in collision 
with the law of the Empire must of course be a wrong interpretation." 

This, as an accurate government summary made up from 
dispatches, extending over several months, shows what was 
meant by '^'^ religious toleration" in Turkey, after theHatt 
of 1856 had been on paper for twenty years ! 

Still greater pressure was brought to bear in securing the 
third promise of reform, after the Eusso-Turkish War of 
1877-78. Profuse promises were made by the 
representatives of Turkey at the Congress of iRys'^ 
Berlin, The Sultan afterward solemnly agreed 
to carry out the engagements of the Hatt-i-Humayoun of 
1856, and even to enlarge the measure of freedom therein 
promised and professedly guaranteed. But — as already 
seen — Turkey, having come to understand what she was to 
be one of the Powers and to use a free hand within her 
own borders, and relying upon the pledges of Great Britain 

1 Eeligious Persecution in Turkey, pp, 87, 40, 49, 54, 
j8 



274 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

in connection with her secret treaty, declined to pledge 
anything more than her *^ word of honor ^' for carrying out 
the Hatt. Every one knows the value of the " word of 
honor" of the " unspeakable Turk" ! 

The inevitable result in fearful wholesale butchery has 
come in due time, and not a hand has been lifted to stay 
the bloodthirsty work of the Great Assassin. Meanwhile 
the power of Islam has been working secretly and cease- 
lessly from the palace at Yildiz Kiosk, to make the whole 
Empire intolerable as an abode for Christians, and in fact 
to annihilate or convert all the Christians. Every possible 
hindrance has been thrown in the way of mission work. 
The censorship of the press has been made use of to pre- 
vent the introduction and distribution of Christian litera- 
ture and the Bible by the missionaries. Evidence is not 
wanting that the decree for the destruction of all Christians 
has gone forth from the palace of the Sultan, and that the 
Kurds and soldiery have been organized, and for several 
years directed to that end. 

It ought to be clear by this time to the obtusest mind 

that Hatts and Imperial Firmans are worthless as a means 

of reforming the Turk and ameliorating the 

^^Sl^"^' condition of his Christian subjects. Turkey 
is a theocratic despotism, based upon the 
Koran, to which religious toleration means suicide. The 
text-book of Turkish law is the Multeka-ul-Abhur (The 
Meeting of the Two Seas). It is hard for Western minds 
to conceive of its absolute authority to the Turkish Courts. 
Canon MacColl has said of it — buttressing his statement 
by citing the French author Ubicini : ^ 

"It belongs to the class of books, and stands next in authority to 
the Koran ; or rather, it is the authorized interpreter of the Koran, so 
that in all disputed passages the Multeka must be consulted; and then 
causa jinita est. ' All points respecting dogmas, divine worship, 
morals, civil and political law, etc., are so immutably settled iu thig 

1 Eastern Question, pp. 104-5t 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 275 

work as to dispense with all future glosses and interpretation.' It is, 
in fact, ' regarded as an autliority without appeal.' It is a compila- 
tion in two folio volumes, written originally in Arabic, and trans- 
lated into Turkish under Sultans Ibrahim I. and Mohammed II. It 
was revised in 1824 by order of the Porte, and a new edition, bearing 
the official government stamp, was published in 1856, soon after the 
promulgation of the Hatt-i-Humayoun. It is the sole authority of the 
Turkish judges and Turkish lawyers. Their minds are saturated 
with its principles and precepts. In its atmosphere they may be said 
to live and move and have their being." 

The restrictions placed npon Christians by this organic 
law of the Turkish Empire, and necessarily resulting from 
the teachings of the Koran, show that " relig- 
ious toleration " in Turkey may be described eration 
as " the most ferocious display of bigotry that 
has ever disgraced the judicial system of any government 
calling itself civilized." In short, it is only another name 
for a savage intolerance beside which the worst features 
that were ever devised by the Spanish Inquisition were 
tender mercies. 

The Spirit of Islam is expressed in the Official Prayer 
used constantly throughout the Turkish Empire, and daily 
repeated by thousands of Mohammedan students. It ex- 
presses the same toleration as does the Muezzin, who always 
goes up to the worship of the altar with drawn sword in 
hand. The Prayer runs thus : 

" I seek refuge with Allah from Satan (the rejeem), the accursed. 
In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful ! O Lord of 
all creatures ! O Allah ! Destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine 
enemies, the enemies of the religion ! O Allah ! Make their children 
orphans, and defile their abodes! Cause their feet to slip; give them 
and their families, their households and their women, their children 
and their relations by marriage, their brothers and their friends, 
their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands, as 
booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all Creatures!" 

All but Moslems are " infidels " and under the Turkish 
law. Concerning this diabolical system of Turkish law, 
and the skill of the Turk, after the training of more than 



276 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

a half century by the great diplomats of Europe, in dealing 
with it. Canon Mac Coll has further to say : ^ 

"The Multeka, then, is the universal code of Turkish law, to -which 
every Mussulman must bow from the Sultan downwards, and from 
whose decrees there can be no appeal. And the skill of Turkish 
diplomacy consists in reconciling the largest measures of reform with 
the doctrines and precepts of the Multeka. This it does by such am- 
bidextrous use of language as shall enable a Turkish official to drive 
the proverbial ' coach-and-six ' through the finest Hatt that ever issued 
from the Sublime Porte," 

The Turkish skill in this regard has already been shown, 
in connection with the provisions of the Hatt of 1856. 

The three successive failures thus sketched — 
J^nine ®^^^ succeeding one greater and more horrible 

in its results than the last — show the utter and 
everlasting hopelessness of all attempts at reform in Turkey 
through the agency of the Turk. The organic law of the 
Empire — forever prohibiting Christian equality — renders 
it impossible, and makes all schemes having it in view 
utterly Utopian. The Sultan knows that reform would 
mean revolution and dissolution, and knowing this he has 
proclaimed every so-called reform hypocritically — follow- 
ing each reform Irade, or preceding it, by a secret order 
for oppression and butchery. These orders during the 
last few years have evidently kept steadily in view the 
gradual extermination of the Christian subjects of the 
Porte, beginning with the Armenians as the wealthiest and 
most influential, and as least intimately connected re- 
ligiously and racially with the Powers of Europe. In the 
meantime he has exerted himself to set these Powers at 
loggerheads, and so to prevent anything from being accom- 
plished, while he has applied himself to making the most 
of the provisions of the Anglo-Turkish Convention for fur- 
nishing him protection and immunity in carrying out his 
gcheme of extermination. 

J The Eastern Question, pp. 105-6, 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 277 

In view of all this course of history could anything dem- 
onstrate more clearly the political lunacy and the moral 
idiocy of the so-called Christian nations, than their recent 
conduct ? That, after all this experience of criminal fail- 
ure, they should, at the close of three, years of the blood- 
iest butcheries that have ever occurred in the 
history of the Christian centuries, propose as "^"tu^ 
a remedy another Halt, is an insult to the in- 
telligence of Christendom and an unpardonable crime 
against humanity ! That after six months of elaborate 
fooling they should propose that when the new Hatt has 
gone through the long-drawn-out process of negotiation 
with the Sultan — extending possibly till 1898 — the Great 
Assassin shall be given plenty of time and left practically 
to his own sweet will in carrying out the proposed re- 
forms, caps the climax of diplomatic imbecility and in- 
iquity ! 

(IV.) Things Essential to a Eighteous Solution. 

It has already been insisted that there can be no perma- 
nent solution of the Eastern Question, either in its en- 
tirety, or in any of its parts, except along the lines of 
humanity and righteousness. But under this principle 
there are some things that may be regarded as practically 
settled. 

The fundamental necessity is that Turkish rule shall be 
absolutely abolished. Eecent events show that Mr. Glad- 
stone's policy, pushing the Turk ^' bag and 
baggage " out of Europe, must be amended and i;- ■^^"i^*^"^ °^ 
enlarged so as to include the pushing of him 
as ruler out of Asia and Africa as well. He should be 
placed beyond any possible opportunity of ruling over 
Christians anywhere. The Turkish Empire should be 
abolished. The Turk has cursed the fairest portions of 
the globe for now many centuries, and is acknowledged to 



278 THE CRIIVIE OF CHRISTENDOM. 

have forfeited all possible right to continue his blighting 
influence. 

But would not such a course on the part of the Powers 
as is necessary to make an end of Turkish rule involve 
great bloodshed ? That is the question that startles and 
balks the diplomats. 

Well, suppose it should. The sustaining of the Turk 
in power has already cost a vast amount of bloodshed, in 
the wars that have been waged by the so-called Christian* 
Powers, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Chris- 
tians that have been butchered in cold blood ; and if the 
same policy is continued the wars and the butcheries will 
in the near future, as in the past, be continued. That 
policy has already rolled up the immense bonded debt of 
Turkey, and if continued must add to it even more rapidly. 

But there are abundant reasons for doubting the blood- 
shed, if the Powers should vigorously take the Turk in hand. 
The Sultan is not yet acknowledged as the 

DoubtM Commander of the Faithful by the other Mo- 
Bloodshed. . "^ 

hammedan peoples. He is not the Sheikh-ul- 

Islam, but a usurper. The Mussulmans even in Arabia do 
not recognize him. Those of other nations do not pray 
for him but for their own rulers — those in Morocco pray- 
ing for their own Sultan, those in India for Queen Vic- 
toria, the Empress of India. 

The possibility — in the event of the Powers taking the 
Turk in hand — of a rising of the Mohammedans in India 

against the British Government, out of sym- 
Y^f:* °^ pathy with their co-religionists, has been made 

much of by some Philo-Turks. In the Con- 
temporary Revieio for February, 1897, Canon MacColl dis- 
cusses that subject, in view of an exaggerated statement in 
the London Times of the feeling in India at the assailing 
of the "Commander of the Faithful ^' with the foulest 
abuse as '^a butcher and a murderer.'' Concerning this 
the Canon says, in outlining his discussion : 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 279 

" It would be unwise to disregard the state of mind liere described; 
but equally unwise to exaggerate its importance. Does it, in truth, 
accurately represent the feelings of Her Majesty's Mussulman subjects 
in India in the mass ? Next, is there any reasonable ground for it ? 
Lastly, would it be prudent, in any case, to let it influence British 
policy and senthnent in regard to the Sultan ? To these questions I 
propose in the following pages to return such answers as appear to 
me to be ratified by reason, justice, and the facts." 

In the course of his discussion he brings out the fact 
that the Sunni Mohammedans of Turkey and the Shiah 
Mohammedans who occupy Persia and portions of India 
treat each other as schismatics and heretics, and the latter 
** regard the Sultan with peculiar abhorrence.'^ The mis- 
representations and agitation in India originate mainly 
with the Mutazilites, now a small and insignificant sect of 
Indian Mohammedan freethinkers, and who are not a rep- 
resentative class ; and with the impoverished and decaying 
aristocracy of Islam, It was this small but noisily inclined 
element that, in 1877, instigated by the British Jingoes, 
sent addresses to the British Government, '^'^ protesting 
against any interference with the Sultan." 

The late Mr. Forster, while declaring his belief in the enor- 
mous exaggeration of the extent of the sympathy of Indian 
Mussulmans for the Sultan, insisted that it 
would in any case be at her peril if England ^^' ^P^'^^^^'s 
listened to it. Of the subject-races in India, 
he said, ''An enormous majority are Hindus, and what 
would they think of that country which governed its re- 
lations to Christian Europe upon a regard to Mohamme- 
dan prejudices "i" 

Three points instanced by the Canon indicate the wide 
separation of the Turkish and Indian Mussulmans : 

First, the Khutbah, or Friday prayer for the Sovereign, 
is never said for the Sultan in any mosque out of Turkey. 
When there was a universally acknowledged Khalif, or 
Commander of the Faithful, he was prayed for in every 
mosque in the world. 



280 THE CKIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Second, the appeal of the Mussulmans of India has been 
made, not to the Sultan, but to the Ulema of Mecca. 

Third, the office of the Sheikh-ul-Islam in Turkey itself 
is a public official recognition that the Sultan is not ac- 
knowledged even in Turkey as Khalif and Commander of 
the Faithful. Since the extinction of the Khalifat with 
the Omeyyad dynasty in the year 750, says Sir W. Muir, 
there has never been a successor of the Prophet acknowl- 
edged as such over all Islam. 

The mass of Mohammedans in India would not be in- 
clined to sympathize Avith the Sultan in the event of the 
Powers of Europe breaking with him ; and even if so in- 
clined would be practically helpless. 

The Sultan could expect no sympathy from the millions 

of Moslems under the rule of the Czar. On the contrary, 

"they have repeatedly and loyally fought 

EkewhSe against him,"' under the Russian flag ; and 
when in 1877 the Czar declared war against 
Turkey his Moslem subjects " hastened to assure him of 
their loyalty and satisfaction, and of their horror at the 
massacres of Christians of which the Sultan had been 
guilty." 

The Sultan could not even depend, in the event of de- 
cisive action on the part of the Powers, upon the Moslem 
subjects of his own Empire. Arabia re|)ueliates his head- 
ship and has long been in a state of chronic revolt verging 
upon practical independence. The Mohammedans in Eu- 
rope who are not of the Turkish race, but descended from 
converts to Islam by the sword, and who in addition to 
their present experiences of Turkish oppression are still 
influenced by traditions of unspeakable past horrors, hate 
the Turk, and have exhibited their chronic hatred by con- 
stant rebellions, especially in Central and Upper Turkey, 
and by their present readiness to rebel. 

It is therefore the reasoned conviction of many of the 
best judges that powerful combined pressure brought to 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 281 

boar by tlie Powers promptly and efficiently;, would prob- 
ably finish the rule of the Turk without any great blood- 
shed, — possibly with less than would result from another 
iniquitous experiment in sustaining him in his present 
position. 

The dismemberment of the Empire is not only a physical 
and racial requisite, but also a governmental necessity. 
With the passing of the Turk the very serious 

problem of governing his vast domain will be^. ^- ^^^^^ ^ 
r a o DismemDerment. 

on. No government can be at all satisfactory 
that does not secure the four primary conditions of civiliza- 
tion : security for life, honor, religious liberty, and property. 
The obstacles in the way of bringing about these condi- 
tions are simply insuperable. The immense extent of the 
Empire and the physical conformation of the 

various subiect lands constitute a first diffi- Incongruous 
'' . . Elements, 

culty. The Turkish possessions, immediate 

and tributary, in Europe, Asia and Africa, are equal in 
extent to half of Europe, or of the United States. They 
are widely scattered, traversed in every direction by prac- 
tically impassable mountains and deserts, frozen at one 
extremity and with the hottest places on the globe at the 
other, and having over almost all their vast regions no 
facilities for civilized intercommunication and intercourse. 
This vast and scattered region is inhabited by races almost 
innumerable", representing the most diverse religious faiths, 
being chiefly in a condition of barbarism or semi-barbarism, 
and having no conception whatever of just and settled law 
and government. Ottomans, Slavs, G-reeks, Albanians, 
Eoumanians, Armenians, Druses, Jews, Tatars, Kurds, 
Gjrpsies, furnish representatives of Mohammedanism with 
its scores of sects, of the ancient Greek and Armenian 
churches, of Komanism and Protestantism, of the old 
Maronite and Nestorian Christianity, of the anti-Moham- 
medan faith of the Kizzilbash Kurds, and of many 
heathenish religions, — and none of them have anything in 



282 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

common except that each, of the races and religions hates 
the others. 

The task of governing 30^,000,000 or more of such peoples 
in such circumstances and with such environment through 

one central government manifestly is an im- 
No Central .-, ■, -^y n <? 

Government, possible one. JSIo sane man would for a mo- 
ment think of proposing autonomy for such a 
vast domain comprising so heterogeneous elements. For 
such g,n autonomy based on civilized principles there would 
be not a single one of all the requisites, — intelligence suffi- 
cient to grasp the situation, a dominant race with a genius 
for just government and proper traditions and training for 
it, abundant financial and military resources for putting 
the economical, educational, social and political problems 
in process of speedy solution. These peoples have no qual- 
ifications for self-government. 

It would be little short of lunacy, after the lessons of 
the last seventy-five years, to propose to continue the 
Turkish domain intact under a Mixed Com- 
A Mixed mission acting from Constantinople subject 
to the Concert of European Powers. The 
Concert has, up to the present time, been the concert of the 
Kilkenny cats ; and the new arrangement, if proposed, 
would merely expand the range of the iniquitous game of 
diplomacy in which the Powers, in their efilorts after selfish 
aggrandizement, would be more than likely to add new 
miseries to those that they have so long forced the subject- 
races to endure at the hands of the Turk. Let every 
Christian in Christendom pray earnestly that God will de- 
liver these subject-races from anything like a European 
Commission and Concert ! 

Equally impracticable would be any attempt to continue 

the Turkish domain intact in control of some one of the 

great Powers — as Great Britain or Eussia. 

Under One j^yg^ if the other Powers should consent to it 
Power. 

— which they most assuredly would not — it 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 283 

could be only as a temporary arrangement, tlie effective- 
ness of which, in the pursuit of their own supposed in- 
terests, they would do their best to prevent. Moreover, 
even if any Power were willing and permitted to undertake 
it, the cost of such a vast administrative system as would 
be required could not be met from the revenues of the 
impoverished countries, and the Turkish Bonds held by 
the European Shy locks and made necessary by European 
diplomacy, would be unprovided for. And who does not 
know that these bondholders control the governments of 
Christian Europe ? 

Nothing short of dismemberment of the Empire will 
meet the case. Such a dismemberment must provide for 
the guaranteeing of the Turkish Bonds — 
11,200,000,000, after the Eusso-Turkish War, '^^b^m?''^ 
and now somewhat indefinite in amount and 
most uncertain of income ; for the effective taming and 
controlling and civilizing of the wild hordes of barbarians ; 
and for conserving the real interests of the races and the 
Powers concerned. 

The solutions of the problem that have been proposed, as 
has recently been suggested by an English writer in the 
Co7itemj)orary Revieiv (February, 1897),^ re- 
solve themselves, broadly speaking, into the Proposed 
three following : 

1. The scheme which Sir Henry Elliot strove to promote 
through Midhat Pasha in 1877,^ namely, the summoning 
of an Ottoman Parliament, and the setting up of a new 
Sultan in the position of a constitutional Sovereign. 

2. Government by an International Commission, with or 
without a puppet Sultan. 

3. A further measure of dismemberment, dividing among 

^ " Sliall we invite tlie Russians to Constantinople?" by Roland 
Knyvet Wilson. 

2 What resulted from the attempt in 1877 has already been indicated. 
See p. 113. 



284 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

different Christian Governments all the European provinces, 
and Asiatic Turkey at least as far south as the Taurus. 

As to the first proposition, it would be easier to summon 
an Ottoman Parliament than to inaugurate therein autono- 
mous principles such as would be necessary to give it 
judicious character. The various Moslem tribes have a 
hatred of each other second only to their combined hatred 
of their Christian countrymen. Then the Moslem's re- 
ligious law makes it a capital offense for him to change 
his religion, and the same religious law is so interpreted as 
to deny to the Christian subjects of Turkey the primary 
conditions of citizenship, namely, security for life, honor, 
religious liberty, and property. Christians in Turkey — the 
Armenians — are literally outlaws, and an outlaw is "a. 
person excluded from the benefit of the law, or deprived of 
its protection." The Mussulman can not become a Christian 
and the Christian cannot embrace Islam, and with the gulf 
between them they could not conjointly frame a constitu- 
tion or legislate judicially. " Young Turkey " may deem 
itself quite progressive, but in an Ottoman Parliament 
such as has been suggested the true instinct of the Old 
Turk would predominate. Nothing for the betterment of 
Turkey would ever be accomplished by the perpetrators of 
the recent massacres and the survivors of their victims sit- 
ting in a parliament. The " new Sultan in the position of 
constitutional Sovereign " is out of the question. 

As to the second proposition, an International Commis- 
sion would be a repetition in point of jealousy and in- 
trigue of the Concert of Europe, with the added difficulty 
that such a commission would be a standing peril to the 
peace of Europe. 

The third proposition is feasible, with the proviso, as sug- 
gested by Sir Roland Wilson, that dismemberment of the 
Turkish Empire should include decapitation of that head 
which is the most diseased part of the amorphous organism. 

It might seem at first blush that the old geographical 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 285 

divisions of Turkey with which everybody is familiar might 
be the most natural in the event of its dis- 
memberment, — Turkey in Europe largely jj^^fsJIj^ns 
Greek and Slavic ; Asiatic Turkey, embracing 
Asia Minor or Anatolia, Syria — or Cham, as the Turks call 
it — Turkish Armenia and Kurdistan, and Arabia ; and the 
African tributaries of Turkey, including Egypt and the 
Soudan and the Barbary States not yet absorbed by France. 
But the interests involved would not be conserved by par- 
celling out the estate of the Sick Man in this way. 

All such proposed distributions are, of course, in the 
air. Yet there are certain natural and historic interests, 
certain things that take on the look of mani- 
fest destiny, certain commercial necessities of ^"^^^-v*^!? 
the present and the future, certain natural ap- 
titudes for subduing and governing, that should be taken 
full account of in any just and permanent distribution of 
the Turkish lands. 

The Powers most interested, and that have furnished 
about all the blood and treasure wasted on the Eastern 
Question in this century, are Russia, Great Britain, Austro- 
Hungary, and France. The other Powers — Germany and 
Italy — have only secondary and remote claims and rights in 
the results. Greece has won a right to special considera- 
tion by her recent achievements and progress, and she 
holds an inalienable right to such consideration in virtue 
of her vast ancient gifts to civilization and of her turning 
back from Europe the tide of Asiatic despotism at Ther- 
mopylae and Marathon, as she is seeking to turn it back 
again at the present time. 

The iniquitous limitation of the Kingdom of Greece by 
the Powers, after the Greek Revolution, might be in part 
atoned for — in part only — by giving over to her what is left 
of the Southern or Hellenic belt of Turkey down to Con- 
stantinople, after the autonomous Greater Bulgaria pro- 
posed by Russia in the agreement of San Stefano has been 



286 THE CRIME OP CHEISTENDOM. 

erected, and the way provided for an Austrian ontlet by way 
of Salonica, and also the islands that are essentially Greek. 
That would open the way for a Greek development in 
which Greece would probably need for a time the support 
of the Powers. 

There are two things that Russia is doubtless determined 
to have, and that she has a right to have, — free access to 
the Mediterranean Sea on the West and to the Persian Gulf 
on the South — the former to give her a fair opportunity 
in Western commerce and the latter to open her way to the 
trade of the Indian Ocean and to her great commercial 
center that is about to be established in Eastern Asia. 
Blood and treasure and breath spent in preventing these 
results will be worse than wasted. Anatolia, Turkish 
Armenia and Kurdistan, and the Eastern Euphrates 
Valley, from Mosul down the Tigris to its junction with 
the Euphrates, and down its eastern bank to the Persian 
Gulf, will give her what she needs and will ultimately have. 
And Eussia has shown her power to subdue and control 
and give peace and civilization to the very races that 
occupy these regions. 

Austro-Hungary will doubtless strenuously insist on an 
open waterway to the Black Sea by the way of the Danube, 
and an open gateway to the Mediterranean by the way of 
Salonica, and can justly claim the right to these privileges, 
a right which she will doubtless ultimately vindicate, if her 
empire becomes unified and consolidated. It would be 
better to take this into account in any proposed distribution 
of Turkish effects. 

Great Britain feels that her commercial necessities require 
permanent control of the Euphrates Valley Route, the 
opening to which Cyprus faces, of the Suez Canal, and of 
the Nile valley, including the Soudan. She has already in 
hand a large part of the territory necessary for this, ob- 
tained and held while posing — with a laugh in the sleeve — 
as the champion of " the integrity of the Ottoman Empire/' 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 287 

and, slie lias abundantly shown her capacity to handle it 
with political and. financial success. To her would, properly 
fall upper Syria and the region beyond it;, taking in the 
Euphrates Valley from the western bank of the Euphrates 
and down to the Persian Gulf; ultimately perhaps the 
suzerainty of Arabia, in which she already has a foothold 
at Aden ; and the undisputed control of Egypt and the 
Soudan. 

To France, which has shown only an inferior capacity as 
a ruling and civilizing power, might be turned over the 
remainder of Syria, including the Lebanon region, for 
which she has done more than any other Power, and 
the Turkish tributary provinces in Africa to the west of 
Egypt, so far as she has not already taken possession of 
them. 

Such suggestions have, of course, no relevance or value, 
except as they fall in with and express some natural or 
irresistible trend of things. They are offered merely as 
suggestions of a possible way out of a situation that seems 
only to grow worse with the advancing years. In such 
dismemberment Prance might plead what she has some- 
time done for S3^ria, as a reason why I^orthern Syria, as 
well as Southern Syria with the Holy City, should be turned 
over to her. So Eussia might be somewhat strenuous in 
her efforts to gain Constantinople as belonging to her for 
the purposes of religious center and commercial entrepot. 
But there is little doubt that some practical solution of 
the matter could be reached if the Powers would honestly 
and earnestly set about it. 

This dismemberment, brought about, should have three 
conditions settled, — one, that revenue shall be provided 
for the interest and the gradual payment of the Turkish 
Bonds so as to secure ultimate release from the Shylocks ; 
another, that full political equality and religious liberty 
shall be guaranteed throughout all the provinces ; a third, 
that Education shall be provided for all classes. Eor the 



288 THE CRIME OF CHEISTENDOM. 

securing of these conditions European control in one form 
or another and as a substantial reality is the one need.^ 

Whether the way shall be opened or provided for the 

future autonomy and independence of any of these regions 

will have to be left to the wise decision of the 

Possible Powers that incur the risks and obligations of 
Autonomy, . ^ 

this summary settlement of the Eastern Ques- 
tion. There are multitudes who would like to see Arme- 
nia again restored to her place and name among the nations ; 
but no one will claim that any portion of the Armenian 
Plateau is either at present ready for self-government or 
will be so in the near future. The strong men who once 
gave the race ascendency in weight of influence in many 
places have been cruelly robbed and murdered, and little 
is left but a cowering mass of the poverty-stricken and 
ignorant, largely composed of helpless women and children, 
and the Turks and Kurds are left masters of the situation, 
and ready at the word to re-enact so far as possible the 
horrors of the past few years. The possibility of the 
autonomous freedom for which some of the Armenian 
Christians have longed must at least be deferred for a 
generation or two in the future. 

Whether any such solution is possible depends ujjon 
whether there can be aroused in Christendom a moral sen- 
timent that can be brought to bear with overwhelming force 
upon the Powers, so as to compel Official Europe to fall 
in with its demands for righteousness and to carry them out. 

(V.) A QuESTiON^ OF Morals rather thajst of 
Politics. 

There seems to have been in recent years a radical 
change in the point of view from which the Eastern Ques- 
tion is to be regarded. The reasons are not far to seek. 
The marvel is the lateness of its coming. The results of 
both the failure in Turkish reform from within and the 
* See The Sultan and the Powers, by Canon MacColl, p. 305. 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 289 

perpetual default or deadlock of diplomacy working from 
without have combined to convince Christendom that the 
question at issue is not one of international law merely, 
but rather one of civilization and morality and humanity. 
The conviction has taken deep hold of the popular mind 
in England and America that the only solution of the East- 
ern Question is to be found in taking it out 

of the hands of those twin monsters of the nine- ,!'*^\*.''7^ 

Morality. 

teenth century in Europe — the Turk and the 
diplomatist. It is a simple principle of intuitive morals that 
no one has a right to stand by and see cold-blooded murder 
perpetrated, without lending a helping hand, and that even 
though the risk in interference be very great. It is an 
equally simple principle that any one who takes the place of 
a looker-on, for the purpose of preventing the interference 
and help of another in stopping such a crime, becomes 
himself a criminal participant in the murder consummated. 
It ought to be an easy matter to see that these same simple 
moral principles hold of the nations in relation to the 
Turk, the Great Assassin of the century, and of him too 
as he is engaged in plying his bloody vocation. 

Nor is it simply a question of religion and religious per- 
secution that is involved. If the hundreds of thousands 
butchered had been the veriest heathen the moral demand 
upon Christendom would have been inexorable. Being 
Christians, then, there is certainly no escaping it. If only so 
many dogs had been subjected to such cruelties — cruelties 
beyond the possibilities of vivisection, against which 
society in recent years has so vigorously protested — it would 
seem that there ought to have been an uprising of the 
world against it ! 

The recognition of the question at issue as fundament- 
ally a moral one rendered certain — as in the case of the 
evil of human slavery — a movement to deal 
with it in the name and on the principles of ^^^^^^-"^ 
immutable righteousness. Christendom, in 
19 



290 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

the persons of its Christian leaders, having reached this 
consensus concerning tlie moral bearings of the Eastern 
Question, the next step — that of public agitation to bring 
the world to this view — was naturally in order. It became 
necessary, in the view of intelligent and earnest Christian 
men, to rouse such a wide-reaching and powerful public sen- 
timent, having a solid rational basis, that the Powers would 
be driven by it to do what is the plain will of Christendom, 
in the interests of civilization and humanity. The time 
was opportune for such agitation. The failure of every- 
thing else had emphasized the necessity for a new method 
of meeting the issues. Hence the " Forward Movement." 

II. The Present Situation and Some Possibil- 
ities. 

That the present struggle over the Eastern Question is a 
desperate one is so manifest that one can hardly contem- 
plate it intelligently without bated breath. A considera- 
tion of the elements involved in the struggle that is now 
on, and the probable outcome, will perhaps help to group 
the facts requisite to a clearer conception of the future 
possibilities. 

(I.) The Elements Involved in the Struggle. 

As already indicated each additional move of the Powers 
has merely served to render the situation more complicated 
and the problems more difficult of 'solution. Yet the 
struggling forces and their motives and aims were never 
more clearly discernible than at the present time. 

The first factor that must be taken into the account is 
the Turk, desperate in view of the peril, and yet defiant 
in view of the vantage resulting from his ac- 
■Rh'^^rt^^tT knowledged position as one of the Powers, vindi- 
cated by his astute diplomacy and skilful 
financiering. Acting with energy and decision the Sultan 
has to-day, as has been shown — thanks to what the Powers 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, EESPONSIBILITIES. 291 

have done for him — a more terrible influence for evil than he 
has ever before had. The money-lenders of Christendom, 
encouraged by the Powers, have furnished him the funds 
with which to equip his army and navy and butld his rail- 
roads and telegraphs. Germany has furnished the military 
brains for organizing and drilling his army, and England 
has done like work for his navy. The wild Kurds are 
organized as the Ilamidieh and the Bashi-bazouks are well 
in hand. His Christian subjects were never so thoroughly 
deprived of all means of self-defense nor so completely 
terrorized. The purpose to exterminate them — either by 
butchery or by conversion — has never before taken such 
thorough possession of the Turkish mind, especially of the 
Sultan's mind. Abd-ul-Hamid has never before been so 
fully conscious that he is master of the situation. A word 
to the telegraph operator in the imperial palace could 
precipitate a massacre that would sweep over the Empire 
from the Balkans to Constantinople, and from the Bosporus 
to Arabia and to Mt. Ararat, — before the horrors of 
which even all those of the so dreadful past would shrink 
into insignificance. The Empire is a vast region mined 
and wired for the explosion, and the latest massacre in 
Constantinople shows that Abd-ul-Hamid is bold enough 
and desperate enough to touch the button when the hour 
of destiny strikes. A word from the Great Assassin might 
at any moment precipitate a Holy War that would shake 
Christendom and deluge it with blood. 

Another factor to be accounted of is found in the Chris- 
tians of well-nigh all Turkey. For all these years a 
reign of terror has extended over the Empire. 
For the past year there has been no home 2 Terrorized 
among all the Christian subjects of Turkey 
but has had reason to fear that the tempest of robbery, 
rape, torture and butchery that has swept the homes of 
the Armenians, might reach and sweep away its own in- 
mates. The Christian world that is looking on from a dis- 



292 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

tance has no conception of the horrors of the situation, for 
it has no conception of the Turkish barbarism of which 
they are the outcome. Again and again appeal has been 
made to Christendom for relief and protection, and Chris- 
tendom has answered with a stony stare or a heartless 
prayer unaccompanied by helpful deeds, and has allowed 
Official Europe to help the Turk to rivet anew the chains 
upon his Christian subjects that had practically been made 
free. These helpless peoples have had reason to lose faith 
in mankind, and Christian-kind, and have been maddened 
by their long and always worsening experience. The 
Christians over the Turkish Empire have never been so 
helpless and hopeless as to-day under the iron heel of their 
Moslem oppressor upheld by the active effort of the Powers 
of Europe ; never so ready to be blotted out. To rouse 
them would be almost like bringing to life the dead. 

Another factor to be considered is the conscienceless 

Powers of Europe, that are mainly responsible for the 

present condition of affairs. Official Europe 

3. Conscience- |g to-day as never before acting independently 
less Powers, *' , . . 

of the best Christian sentiment of Europe and 

in defiance of it. Its despotic combination rests upon its 

system of militarism and iniquitous diplomacy and has 

shown itself capable, if unchecked by some special and 

unexpected power, of pushing through any selfish scheme 

however diabolical. The air is full of rumors of ominous 

things either contemplated or being done. Napoleon 

predicted that Europe would become all republican or all 

Cossack, and there is rumored possibility of more than the 

fulfilment of his prophecy. Eeport has it one day that 

an alliance — in the spirit of the Holy Alliance that was 

formed on the fall of Napoleon, for the maintenance and 

extension of autocratic government — is in process of 

formation between the three Powers that may stand *f or 

the Cossack of Napoleon, Eussia, Austria and Germany. 

With an army on the peace footing of 1,800,000, and a 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, EESPONSIBILITIES. 293 

reserve of 13,000,000;, on easy call, wliat limit can be set, 
humanly speaking, to the possibilities of despotism ? 

Still more definite is the report that Eussia and Turkey 
have secretly combined, the Czar having agreed in con- 
sideration of a bribe — the Peninsula of Mount Athos and 
an island in the Mediterranean Sea — to maintain the in- 
tegrity of the Ottoman Empire, — aj)parently seeking to 
relieve Great Britain of the office that she took ujoon her- 
self in 1878 for the bribe of Cyprus. Indeed some of the 
British Eussophobes in Constantinople profess to know 
that the understanding was reduced to writing and re- 
ceived the signature of the Czar several years ago, and 
that it is on the basis of the treaty of the Unkiar-Scalessi, 
a treaty made between Eussia and Turkey in 1833. That 
was a pledge to aid the Sultan against the movement of 
Young Turkey, then talked of, to dethrone him, as well 
as against any other uprisings or attacks from the outside. 
But it is now more than this ; it is the voluntary return 
of Turkey to the vassalage to Eussia from which the 
Crimean War had relieved her. It is moreover a skillful 
taking up by Eussia, for her own purposes, of the watch- 
word of England and France in the Crimean War, '^^the 
integrity of the Ottoman Empire ; " the result of which, 
it is claimed, will be the absorption of Turkey when the 
hour for it arrives. 

But whatever the truth about these reports the pressure 
of absolutism on the part of three great scheming Powers 
has, in the last few years, forced redeemed Italy and 
republican France and free England to join in suppress- 
ing Cretan republicanism and Greek aspirations for the 
emancipation and unification of the Hellenic peoples, and 
to help make Europe not simply Cossack, but what is 
vastly worse, Turk. Mr. Gladstone accurately expressed 
the humiliating position of Official England, in his letter 
(reported April 16, 1897), to the Macedonian leader^ 
Captain Dampzes, in which he said ; 



294 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

" Under the present deplorable scheme, all the British Government 
has the right to do, seemingly, is to plead its opinions before a tri- 
bunal of two youthful despots, the Emperors of Germany and Russia, 
and to abide by their help to execute their final determinations. Our 
disgraceful office seems to be to place ships, guns, soldiers, and 
sailors at their disposal for the purpose of keeping down the move- 
ment for the liberty of Crete and of securing to these young despots, 
who have in no wise earned the confidence of Europe, the power of 
deciding questions which rightfully belong to the Cretans." 

The possibilities of future massacres of the Christians 
of Turkey, while such combinations exist, are, to say the 
least, unlimited. Indeed, from these three factors — the 
desperate Sultan, the terrorized Christians, and the con- 
scienceless Powers — there is little to be hoped for in the 
cause of freedom in Turkey. Hope must come, if at all, 
from other sources. 

Another factor, that is destined to become a most im- 
portant one, is the uprising of the Greek race for freedom, 
— begun in Crete, extended over Greece, later 
Greece. ^*^ ^^^^ ^^^® Greeks scattered over Turkey and 
the world, and promising to reach all the 
Christians of Turkey that have not been wholly benumbed 
by terror through the Turkish atrocities visited upon them. 
It looks as though the Greeks might some day have to 
meet in Thermopylae and to roll back from Marathon the 
combined forces of modern despotism, headed by the 
Oriental Moslem butchers but supported by Europe, as 
their brave ancestors met and rolled back the Persian hosts 
from these now historic places. It is not easy to measure 
the possibilities of such a movement. If substantially sup- 
ported from without, it might mean such a combination of 
the Greek and Greek Church peoples as would be exceed- 
ingly powerful in the interests of freedom in the Orient ; 
for the Greeks and their sympathizers constitute a larger 
part of the inhabitants than the Turks in the seaport 
towns of Asia Minor, in the coast regions of European 
Turkey, and even in Constantinople. 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, EESPONSIBILITIES. 295 

The liist and most important factor to be considered^ 
and the one on which, under Providence, hope must 
largely rest, is slowly awakening Christendom, 
—for the Christians of the world seem at last ch^^endom^ 
to be slowly waking up to the situation, and 
to their responsibility for it. The Christians of the world 
have allowed — are still allowing — their conscienceless gov- 
ernments to violate every principle of Christianity, morality 
and humanity in dealing with the Armenian Question, 
the Cretan Question, the Grecian Question, in short, the 
entire Eastern Question in all its phases. The govern- 
ments are professedly their governments, representing 
them, responsible to them, and should be made to carry out 
their will. If the Christians can force them to do this, 
and fail to do so, then the responsibility must unquestion- 
ably rest upon the Christians themselves, — the Crime of 
Christendom must become their crime. The consciousness 
of this responsibility seems at last to be taking possession 
more and more of the earnest element over Christian 
Europe and the world. The battle now on between the 
forces that represent this true Christian sentiment, for 
the enslaved and tortured Christians, on the one hand, 
and the unprincipled rulers and governments, for main- 
taining the " unspeakable Turk " on his vantage ground 
for oppression and butchery, on the other, is the most 
momentous moral battle of this age, if not of the ages. 

The factors of the struggle as enumerated show how 
great the present complications are. 

(II.) The Ultimate Outcome. 

Eighteousness will doubtless ultimately prevail even in 
the affairs of the Orient and in the councils of Europe ; 
but how this will be brought about is beyond human vision. 
Two ways at present seem to be open : (1) a moral upris- 
ing of Christendom that shall be so widespread and power- 
ful as to be able to paralyze the conscienceless Grovernments 



296 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

that are supporting the Turkish power ; (2) an overwhelm- 
ing demonstration of Divine Providence that shall show 
the Powers to be Impotences, by setting the oppressed 
Christians free in spite of them. 

It is scarcely too much to say that it has been practically 
shown that the present consensus of the true Christendom 
is that the Eastern Question should be settled 
■L- ^?^^^^^^ now, and settled on principles of righteousness, 
and humanity. It has also been made clear 
in the progress of events that there has been a growing 
conviction that three things must enter into the solution 
of the Eastern Question : 

First, Christendom must take it out of politics, and lift 
it up to its proper place, that of civilization, humanity 
and morality. 

Second, it must arouse and organize such a public senti- 
ment and make itself so powerfully felt that the so-called 
Christian Powers shall be forced to forsake their diabolical 
diplomacy, and, as the representatives of Christendom, to 
sweep the Sultan and Turkish rule out of existence. 

Third, it must begin this moral uprising and organiza- 
tion in the regions most in sympathy with evangelical 
Christianity and human freedom — in "Western Europe and 
America — and push it eastward until it shall rouse to sym- 
pathy and action even the peoples of the great autocratic 
and despotic empires, and force to righteousness the hands 
that are now sustaining the Great Assassin. 

It was such a moral movement as this that, under the lead 
of Mr. Gladstone, overthrew the Disraeli Government in 
1876, on the question of the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. 
The French Chambers and Italian Government are still 
more amenable to public opinion and much more liable to 
be swept out of power by a change in popular opinion than 
the Government of Great Britain. On the contrary, absolut- 
ism practically prevails in the three Eastern Powers, Ger- 
many, Aust^-o-Hungar^ and Russia, It is probleraatic^l what 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 297 

can be hoped for from such a moral uprising at the present 
time in influencing, or rather coercing, the policy of the 
Great Powers. 

Naturally the Christian awakening first made itself felt 
in Great Britain. It was attempted from the opening of 
the Armenian massacres in 1894, by a "^ Non- 
party" agitation, to rouse conscienced. Christian ^on-Party 
England against commercial. Official England ; 
but it all evaporated in sentiment, and the massacres con- 
tinued regardless of it. The Government substantially ig- 
nored it, for Lord Eosebery, then at the helm, was always 
ready to blow hot and cold without moral compunction; 
and there was no Gladstone to lead the way to the forma- 
tion of a new government ; so the agitation was imprac- 
tical and futile. Hence the new " Forward Movement " 
was inaugurated to reach and, if possible, to coerce the 
British Government into representing the Christian people 
and Christian principles. 

The origin of the Forward out of the Non-party move- 
ment has recently been clearly and strongly presented by 
Mr. George W. E. Russell, a prominent English non-con- 
formist, and its character and aims distinctly set forth. ^ 
It is neither possible nor necessary to give an extended 
account of this agitation. It is only requisite to indicate 
its scope. 

The ''Forward Movement," as the coalition of the people 

as opposed to delegated diplomats has since been called, was 

fairly begun when Christian England came to 

full consciousness on this point. " We did not "^il® Forward 

. \ Movement, 

christen the movement, says Mr. Russell ; 

" the name came to us of its own accord. People began 

to talk of the ' Forward Movement," and we welcomed the 

phrase because, in these great causes where public morality 

is involved, no7i progredi est regredi." 

1 Armenia and the Forward Movement, Contemporary Review, 
Jaiiuary, 1897. 



298 THE CRIME OF CHKISTENDOM. 

The adherents of the Forward Movement had no such 
faith in Lord Salisbury as had controlled the advocates of 
the Non-party movement. In November, 1896, some of 
them met and formulated their views in a set of resolutions, 
of which the following is one : 

"This meeting recognizes that the present Eastern situation is 
mainly the result of the Conservative policy in the past ; that Lord 
Salisbury, as, a member of the Berlin Congress, is especially respon- 
sible for the existing state of affairs in Armenia; and therefore that 
the present Minister cannot be trusted to deal with the Armenian 
Question." 

These resolutions were sent broadcast over Great Britain, 
and they had the desired effect of attracting attention to 
the subject. Says Mr. Eussell : 

" Good men sympathized; brave men were glad; timid men were 
frightened ; and the smug Philistinism of the comfortable classes 
found it incredible that sensible men should take an unpopular side 
for the sake of a moral cause." 

In this way the Forward Movement practically began — 
not as a sectarian movement, and not for the advancement 
of the Liberal party, although it sought to employ the 
moral force of the Liberal party as the most effective imple- 
ment for the attainment of its ends. Canon MacColl and 
a few associates led a somev/hat similar movement in 1876, 
in opposition to Lord Beaconsfield, and now, as at that 
time, his utterances and those of the Duke of Argyll have 
great weight. It was Canon MacColl who, on visiting 
Hawarden in September, 1896, prevailed on Mr. Gladstone 
to make his Liverpool speech. The great statesman had 
already written his letter in reply to the editor of the 
French Figaro. His February letter to the Duke of West- 
minster — a paper unsurpassed in height of Christian tone, 
breadth of statesmanship, sustained eloquence, and white 
heat of moral indignation, by any production of modern 
times — followed in due time, and created a profound sen- 
sation throughout Christendom. The agitation has been 



CONCLtrsIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 299 

kept up by the Liberal leaders in Parliament and in the 
pulpit and press, and has extended both to Europe and 
to America. 

It was already difficult before the Cretan imbroglio to 
tell just what had been the actual outcome of all the agita- 
tion in Europe and America ; now it is still 

more difficult. It has doubtless lield back ^^"^^ °^ f^ 

Movement. 

the British Government from doing much that 
it would have done under the influence of the Europ«an 
Concert. It has had an immense influence on France, for 
in that republic there is a powerful public opinion in favor 
of liberty, and a strong sentimental attachment for the 
cause of the Greeks, and deep symjDathy with the utter- 
ances of Mr. Gladstone and the English Liberals. A sim- 
ilar influence, but less in degree, has also been exerted upon 
Italy, where a powerful sentiment in favor of liberty still 
prevails. As a result of the moral uprising the three 
Liberal Powers, England, France and Italy, while bound 
by the Concert with the three arbitrary Kaisers, have been 
restrained from taking strong positive action with them, 
or, when acting, have been constrained to act with the 
greatest reluctance and hesitancy. The recent court- 
martial of a Eussian naval officer for not obeying his orders 
to fire on the Cretan Christians indicates that its influence 
has reached even the Eussians. Though guilty the officer 
was not sentenced because of his plea that Ids crew tvoulcl 
have mutmied had he ordered them to fire ! 

But it is evident that the Christian peoples have not yet 
made themselves felt as an overwhelming power by the 
Governments. Even the British Prime Minister has not 
yet yielded to them. They have balked the purpose of the 
Powers to do their worst, but they have not forced their 
hands to move in the interests of righteousness. Can they 
do this ? Can the worse Britain and the hesitant European 
Powers be stirred and forced to decisive action for right- 
eousness ? 



300 THE CRIME OP CHRISTEKDOM. 

How difficult it is to rouse and make effective such a 
moral sentiment in Great Britain the efforts of the past 
years have shown. Greece was throttled by 
^^^oused^ ^^ ^^^® Powers in her struggle to regain her place 
in Europe, in spite of all that sympathy with her 
present heroism and past glories could do. In the Crimean 
War Great Britain sacrificed the lives of thousands of her 
bravest sons and poured out her treasures like water, in spite 
of the protests of the noble Prince Consort and the indignant 
cry of her best subjects, and she persisted in consummating 
the iniquity that left the Christians of the Turkish Empire 
without a protector, and that made the subsequent role of 
the Turk as one of the Powers of Europe possible. When 
the Stipulation of San Stefano had provided, at immense 
cost to Kussia, for the freedom and protection of all the 
Christian subjects of the Turkish Empire, Lord Beacons- 
field with his Jingoism was able to overturn everything 
that had been accomplished, and to bind England by a 
compact that has resulted in all the Armenian atrocities of 
these years and in the deadlock that has left the Christians 
of Turkey hopeless of relief, — and to do this in spite of all 
that the Brights and Gladstones and Argylls and the best 
Christians of England could do to the contrary ! 

And if the Christian sentiment can be given so little 
effect in Great Britain, what wonder that it is still less 
effective over Europe with its absolutist traditions ! What 
wonder that there is the humiliating and disgraceful spec- 
tacle of Official Europe openly arrayed against the will of 
Christian Europe and thwarting all its purposes and as- 
pirations ! In short, the grounds for hope of an effective 
overturning of the dominant policy of Europe through the 
moral uprising of Christendom seem to be of the slenderest. 
It is fast becoming clear that the Forward Movement must 
fail of securing its proposed end unless reinforced by some 
powerful interposition of Providence. 

But all history shows that Providence is not limited to 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, EESPONSIBILITIES. 301 

moral resources and to ordinary methods. In considering 
the Eastern Question it must be remembered 
that the unexpected and the impossible are ^•jj^^^^^^'^gg*^^ 
oftenest the probable. In forecasting for the 
humanly probable, to which men are limited, they are lia- 
able to miss the divinely probable, and so to go far astray 
of the actual outcome. In guessing obscurely at what are 
to be the historical developments in connection with 
Europe and the Ottoman Empire, some hints may be drawn 
from the present situation, in connection with the move- 
ments of history. 

There is possibly a long process of gradual dismember- 
ment of the Ottoman Empire, that will be a continuation 
of what has been going forward ever since the 

Greek Revolution. Such a process will in- ^^^^^^^ ^i^- 

. ■'^. . memDerment. 

volve the removal of one Christian community 

after another from the control of the Sultan, when the con- 
dition of each shall become too desperate to be longer con- 
tinued, as in the case of Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herze- 
govina ; or when the greed of one and another of the Powers 
shall lead them to the appropriation of additional territory, 
as in the case of Egypt and Algeria. That will involve 
long-continued sufferings to the enslaved Christians and — 
by substituting expediency and selfishness, interests and 
interest, for righteousness and humanity — will round out to 
horrible completeness the slowly consummating Crime of 
Christendom ! 

There have undoubtedly been times when immediate and 
decisive action would have brought in the reign of right- 
eousness speedily. That was the case when 
Nicholas made his original diagnosis of the decisive 
"Sick Man." It was probably the case after 
the Russo-Turkish War of 1878. Such action, owing to 
generations of iniquitous diplomacy, for which Great 
Britain is largely responsible, seems scarcely possible now, 
without unspeakable convulsions and bloodshed, extending 



302 THE CRIME OE CUllISTEKDOM. 

over Turkey and possibly over all Europe. In the face of 
such possible results even Christian men are becoming 
cowards and "losing even fugitive glimpses of an ideal/' 
The Powers are afraid to take decisive action^, and many 
of the Christian leaders of Great Britain even, while be- 
lieving with Professor Eendel Harris/ of Cambridge, that 
the British '^''Eastern policy h^s always been wrong, and 
that the time is come when a vigorous and final quietus 
should be given to the Turkophilism of rulers and finan- 
ciers," and that " to coerce Greece, when she is playing 
the part of the last of the seven champions of Christendom, 
would be a blunder from which our reputation would 
never recover ; " are still inclined, with stalwart Dr. Bar- 
rett of JS'orwich, to think that since "to take sides with 
Greece and begin a European War" "would probably end 
in the annihilation of the Armenians and the destruction 
of Crete itself," and since " we may, by standing on one 
side and declining to act with the Powers, tacitly urge 
Greece to defy Europe," " a policy that would be as 
cowardly as it would be cruel," the only course left, that 
will not " too surely create more evils than those it is 
intended to remedy," is to use the national " influence with 
Greece to induce her to yield peaceably to the ultimatum 
and then, later on, act in the direction already indicated 
by Lord Salisbury, endeavor to secure for Crete — if it desires 
it — annexation to Greece." So great is the dread of evil 
results seen to be possible and known to be guiltily in- 
curred ! 

And yet such decisive action has recently been shown 
not to be impossible by an incident that may indicate an 
open door of hope. As has been already said. Providence 
is not limited to moral resources, but is able to make use 
of the very iniquities of the Sultan and the Powers to 
force the co-operation of the latter with the righteous 

1 See Symposium on the question " Shall Britain Coerce Greece ?' 
in the British Weekly for March 11, 1897. 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 303 

public sentiment roused by the Forward Movement. The 
necessities of the Turk and the greed of Commercial 
Europe may possibly come to the rescue in the hour of 
greatest Christian extremity. Early in December, 189G, 
it was rumored that the Sultan, " who is in despair for 
ready money both for the enormous expenses of the Palace 
and to pay the establishments in the capital, intended to 
raise a loan, and proposed, in order to make it acceptable, 
either to give its subscribers precedence, or to grant them 
a mortgage on some of the revenues clearly pledged to the 
creditors of tl)£ State." That changed the situation and 
began a revolution at once. On December 23 it event- 
uated in M. de Nelidoif's Note to the Porte. The London 
Spectator, of January 9, presents the matter in a trenchant 
editorial, the substance of which is contained in the foil ow- 
ing paragraphs : 

"Instantly the Ambassadors, who are so slow and so hesitating 
when massacres are to be prevented, became hurried men of business- 
like decision. There were consultations by telegraph ; London, 
Paris, and St. Petersburg were at once united ; and on the 23d 
M. de Nelidoff handed to the Porte for transmission to the Sultan a 
Note which, as far as finance is concerned, is a definite ultimatum. 
His Majesty is informed that if he infringes the rights of the Council 
of the Public Debt, or meddles with the revenues conceded to the 
holders of Turkish securities, Russia, together with the other Powers, 
will demand an International Commission of financial inquiry ; that 
the original rights of the creditors, now suspended by agreement, 
will revive ; and that the Sublime Porte will understand how fatal 
that eventuality might become. In plain English, the Sultan was 
informed that if he meddled with money on which great financiers in 
foreign capitals are relying, Turkey would be put in cominission as 
Egypt has been. The Sultan, of course, made his inquiries, found 
that the Powers were unanimous, and at once yielded to their dicta- 
tion. The project was abandoned, and comfort was restored to tlie 
parlors of the great financial houses which either hold the Turkish 
Debt or have advanced great sums of money on the secui-ity of 
Turkish Bonds. 

" Just think for one moment Miiat that incident means. All the 
humanitarians of Europe, backed by the British Government, and 



804 THE CEIME OP CHRISTENDOM. 

in a certain degree by tliat of France , liave been urging that the Sul- 
tan sliould be punished for liis massacres of Christians, or at all 
events, tliat he should bejDrevented by definite threats of intervention 
from ever pursuing the same ' policy ' again. Their urgency has 
been so extreme that tliey have been willing to incur the risks which 
would be produced by the Sultan's resistance, to entrust the execu- 
tion of the mandate to a Power suspected of grand ambitions, and 
even to allow a change in the possession of Constantinople which has 
been resisted by force, or the menace of force, for the greater part of 
the century. The answer, the effective and paralyzing answer, has 
been that the risks are too great ; that the independence of Turkey 
is essential to the peace of the world ; and that while all the Powers 
condemn the conduct of the Sultan, pressure upon him must be 
limited to verbal remonstrance. So determined was this veto that it 
remained firm even when the massacres had extended to the capital, 
when all Christians were threatened by the excited mob, and when 
marines and sailors were landed to protect the Embassies and Con- 
sulates. No policy could be more firm or more peremptory ; it shook 
the resolves of two British Premiers in succession ; yet the moment 
the great financial houses were endangered, or rather threatened, it 
was given up. The threats of resistance were treated as nugatory, 
the fears of war were dismissed, the jealousies of the Powers disap- 
peared, and the Sultan was informed in Avords — about the diplomatic 
meaning of which there could be no mistake, and which the Sultan 
himself interpreted as a threat ' to make of the Khalif another Khe- 
dive,' — that he could not and should not commit this monstrous out- 
rage. To slaughter out the Armenian nation was one thing ; to 
touch Bonds, those sacred depositaries of financiers' wealth, was 
quite another and more considerable thing. The wrath of Europe, 
Avhich in the first case would, it was alleged, light up a flame big 
enough to consume the world, would in the second case do no harm, 
— would, in truth, act as a drenching influence upon the gunpowder 
lying all about. Even, however, if it did not, the risk must be run. 
The pale cheeks of Foreign Ministers were filled with a rush of blood. 
Whatever happened money must not be lost ! ' ' 

Thus an immoral and forced combination of the worse 
witli the better may bring about that unanimity that can 
not be reached through agitation or moral influences. 
Every passing day is making it clearer that the interest on 
the Turkish Bonds, now held in abeyance, can not possibly 
be longer collected from the Sultan, and that the Palace 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 305 

and the Porte can not much longer be financially provided 
for. Would it be at all strange if the result in the near 
future should be, not " to make of the Khalif another 
Khedive," but to bring about the abolition of the Yildiz 
Kiosk, the exile of the Sultan, and the disruption of the 
Turkish Empire ? The Powers that have immorally kept 
the Empire intact for the sake of the interest on the Bonds, 
vrill not be slow in the end to sweep it out of existence 
for the sake of saving the Bonds. Shylock may thus find 
himself, along with the Mephistopheles of diplomacy, an 
unwilling instrument in the hands of Providence. 

There is still another possibility clearly in sight — the 
eventuation of which all Christendom may well pray may 
be averted, — an explosion like the Erench 
Revolution, but on a vastly greater scale, that UDheaTOl 
would wreck absolutism and militarism and 
reconstruct the map of Europe and the world. Everything 
requisite for such an explosion is clearly existent on the 
most gigantic scale — socialism, nihilism, in short, anarch- 
ism — in trains under-running all the institutions and in- 
trenchments of despotism, and waiting for the electric 
spark. A single touch when the hour strikes would 
make short work of the Crime of Christendom by making 
short work of the present recreant European Christen- 
dom. 

If in some way — possibly a way yet unthought of — the 
great ends of righteousness and humanity can not be 
speedily reached, the Turkish Government abolished, and 
the Turkish Empire dismembered and governed by Chris- 
tian rulers in the interest of justice and righteousness, the 
Turkish butcheries will undoubtedly be renewed at an 
early day, with a probable increase of barbarity due to the 
Sultan's having finished another slaughter of the innocents 
with impunity. In such an event Crete and the Mace- 
donian belt and Anatolia will be swept by a tempest of 
blood and fire, a]id as the whirlwind reaches out again ove? 

29 



306 THE CRIME OE CHEISTENDOM. 

wretclied and bleeding Armenia she will be more helpless 
than ever as her name is being blotted out. 

(III.) Suggestions of Eesponsibility. 

The present condition of the Eastern Question, in what- 
ever way brought about, is, at least in some of its aspects, 
the most serious that has confronted Christendom since 
the fall of Constantinople. In the problem that now 
centers in that city three continents and all forms of 
government and of religion meet, a thousand conflicting 
forces clash, and the despotic ideas of the East confront 
in deadly antagonism the free aspirations of the West. 
All this would be serious enough, but it is a far more 
serious matter that Abd-ul-Hamid, through the iniquities 
of so-called Christian diplomacy, has been able to sub- 
sidize all forces and make them agencies in the revival of 
the ancient dream of Pan-Islam and its control of the 
Eastern World. 

Through the twenty years and more of his reign the 

Sultan has evidently had in mind, with growing clearness 

and definiteness, one ruling purpose that he 

Purpose!^ he has carefully concealed from the outside 
world, the restoration of the power and glory 
of Islam. With inconceivable skill and cunning he has 
played England against Eussia and Russia against England, 
and any one or more of the Powers in turn against the 
others, until he has involved the Governments of Christen- 
dom in an almost inextricable maze out of which there is 
no apparent escape except through dreadful loss and wreck 
of interests both lower and higher. The Turko-Greek War 
has furnished Abd-ul-Hamid and the Islamic revivalists 
with whom he has surrounded himself with an occasion 
for a Mohammedan propaganda, conducted after the most 
approved modern methods and extending over Africa and 
Asia, in which exaggerated stories of " Turkish heroism 
and Christian slaughter " are firing the Moslem heart aod 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 307 

bringing back tlio old dreams of universal dominion. 
However such hopes are doomed to be dashed — if, as 
Christendom believes, God reigns and the Gospel is to 
make conquest of the world — the actual results already 
reached make the present condition and the immediate 
outlook more ominous for Christendom, as already- 
suggested, than at any period since the fall of the Eastern 
Empire.-^ 

And who is responsible for all the recent awful occur- 
rences and for the threatening of further and perhaps 
greater disasters ? 

It goes almost with the saying that Islam, especially in 
the person of its foremost representative, the present 
Sultan of Turkey, is primarily responsible for everything. 
It has all been shown to be the legitimate outcome of the 
religion of the False Prophet of Mecca as professed and 
exemplified by the ^"^ unspeakable Turk," Audit is the 
consensus of Christendom that the man and the system 

1 The following extract from an able editorial in The New York 
Sun of June 19, 1897, affords a startling glimpse of the present con- 
dition of tlie Mohammedan world. After sketching the aim and 
com-se of the Sultan, the writer adds in conclusion : 

" The results, however, are there and have to be faced. With his 
throne resting on an empire bankrupt in resources, the Sultan has, 
by sheer force of intrigue and disregard on his own part and by the 
European powers of every consideration of right and justice, been 
able to awaken the slumbering fanaticism of his own people and their 
co-religionists all over the world, which give him hopes, vain though 
they must prove in the end, that he can restore the ancient glories of 
Islam. The victories won by his array in Greece, magnified a hun- 
dredfold, are now the talk of the Moslem world in remotest Asia and 
Africa, and while Germany, without a Mussulman subject to em- 
barrass its policy, has been dictating to the Sultan the course he 
should pursue, those countries most interested in arresting the spread 
of the Islamic fire are hampered by the possession of millions of 
Mussulmans among their populations. For England, and especially 
for the Tory party now in power, whose policy is responsible for the 
Moslem revival throughout Asia and Africa, it is a case of curses, 
like chickens, coming home to roost." 



308 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

ought — in the light of all humanitarian, international, 
and moral principles — to go down with swift and crushing 
judgment to destruction. 

History has made equally patent the complicity and un- 
utterable iniquity of th'e Great Powers of Europe in this 
matter. It is impossible to clear anyone of them of blood- 
guiltiness, least of all Great Britain that would hardly ac- 
knowledge herself not to be the most Christian of them 
all. And — in the light of God's usual providential visi- 
tations upon national sins — it should be in order for them 
to anticipate speedy and just retribution. Few, in whom 
conscience has had its normal development, can fail to 
feel that the Christian world ought without delay to bring 
the present hideous system of governmental diplomacy and 
greed and inhumanity and diabolism to a perpetual end, 
and to bring into control per force a Christian Concert of 
Europe and of the world for securing the reign of right- 
eousness in the bounds of the Ottoman Empire. 

The responsibility for this Crime of the Century — nay, of 
the centuries — must, however, in the last analysis be found 
to rest upon the real Christendom itself, to which has been 
given the mission of shajDing and making effective public 
sentiment for righteousness in the world, — or at least to 
rest upon it so far as it has failed to do what it might have 
done to prevent what has occurred. So must the responsi- 
bility for bringing it to an end. There is no hope from the 
Turk ; he is beyond the reach of any such emotion as pity. 
There is none from the efforts of the terrorized Christians 
under the rule of the Turk ; they are weaponless and help- 
less. There is none from the conscienceless Powers that 
constitute Official Europe of to-day ; they are wedded to 
self-interest and unrighteousness. The only hope — apart 
from special interposition of Providence — seems to lie in 
awakening in the Christians of the world a practical senti- 
ment capable of overmastering the adverse forces already at 
■yvork, or threatening to become operative, It is an effort 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 309 

ill this direction that the "Forward Movement/' as it is 
called in Great Britain, has in view.^ If its ends are to 
be attained, there is imperatively demanded a world-wide 
uprising of the Christians of Christendom, and their organi- 
zation and consolidation into a resistless phalanx that can 
be hurled against the recreant Governments to force them 
to Justice and mercy. In order to this the responsibility 
must be brought home to all concerned, with irresistible 
conclusiveness and deathless grip. 

The Christians ruled by the European Powers on the 
Continent are to a large extent responsible for the present 
state of things, and must be made to feel this 
and to act upon it. It is hard to believe that the ^oTEurope ^ 
masses of evangelical Christians in Continental 
Europe are in accord with their Governments in the policy 
that has recently prevailed in dealing with the Eastern 
Question. Still the indisputable fact remains that they 
have not been roused to the enormity of the crime in com- 
plicity with which they are so deeply involved ; that indeed 
they do not really care what becomes of the Armenians and 
other suffering Christians in Turkey ! 

German Christianity needs especially to be shaken out 
of its indifference. Austro-Hungary is probably too Eomish 
and too ignorant to furnish a hopeful field for reactionary 
effort against its Emperor. In the great crises of the past, 
Eussia, when the hour has struck, has not been found 
wanting. There is reason to hope that the Slavic heart 
will again ultimately respond to the cry of humanity — at 
least when the oppression again reaches those of its own 
race and faith — and that then, as of old, the Czar will be 
found ready to lead in a Christian uprising in behalf of the 
oj)pressed Christians of Turkey. Preparatory to that, 
however, England will have to retreat from the threatening 
attitude that she assumed at the Congress of Berlin and 

1 For an account of this Movement see Contemporary Review, 
January, 1897, article Armenia and the Forward Movement. 



310 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

has since maintained, — lier treachery and duplicity in con- 
nection with which have made it impossible for Eussia or 
any other nation to trust her. Russia alone of the Conti- 
nental Powers is able to force the hand of the Turk, and 
Russia alone knows how to do it. It is all-important that 
every influence should be brought to bear upon opening 
the way for such action, when the time for it arrives. Italy 
and France are doubtless more open to the spread of liberal 
sentiments as such, than Austro-Hungary, although not 
largely responsive to Christian and Protestant influences. 

The Christians of England are chiefly responsible for the 
present condition of affairs among the Christians of Turkey. 
As has been seen. Official England formulated 
^oTSSland!^ ^ncl gave vogue to the principles that brought 
the present crisis. England has had the 
power to stop the reign of crime ; but, either from coward- 
ice or greed, has failed to do it at the critical moment 
when it might have been accomplished by decisive action 
on her part single-handed. Possibly she has the power 
still ; at least she has it in combination and co-operation 
with Russia. A frank confession of and retreat from the 
old position, into which she was pushed by the unprincipled 
diplomacy of Beaconsfield, might possibly secure that co- 
operation and bring back the opportunity. Power and op- 
portunity decide responsibility. A blow at Constantinople 
such as England and Russia — and probably England alone 
through her peerless navy — could deliver, short, sharp and 
decisive, striking down the Great Assassin, might shatter 
the Turkish Empire, preventing a possible proclamation of 
the Holy War that would go far toward rehabilitating Islam, 
and might save Europe from a political upheaval that 
would deluge it with Christian blood. 

Whether these Powers will seize the opportunity when 
it offers— as it doubtless will offer in the developments of 
Providence — must depend upon whether such power and 
momentum can be given to the Christian sentiment of 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, EESPONSIBILITIES. 311 

Great Britain as to force Lord Salisbury beyond the recent 
humiliating confession, that in the Crimean War England 
*' placed her money on the wrong horse," to the reversal of 
the immoral policy originated and inaugurated by Beacons- 
field, but adopted and carried out by himself, that has left 
the English Government without a real friend among the 
nations. When that is done Eussia, judged by her past 
record, will be ready to meet England more than half way 
in undertaking to ameliorate the condition of the subject 
Christians in Turkey. 

There is one more nation whose Christian people share 
in the responsibility for the condition of the Christians in 
the Turkish Empire, and that is the United 
States of America. The Christians of Amer- of America ^ 
ica, through their missions in European Tur- 
key, in Syria, Asia Minor and Armenia, long ago began 
the work of elevating the Christians of those regions, and 
of awakening in them the longing for light and liberty. 
The American churches have expended large sums on their 
mi|^ion-work in Turkey in Europe, in Syria, and in Asiatic 
Turkey, — in gathering churches and building schools, col- 
leges, seminaries and hospitals, to establish centers of light 
and civilization in various parts of the Empire. They have 
indeed belted the Turkish Empire with their institutions. 
They have had their rights secured by Turkish law and in- 
ternational treaties,^ and have always conformed strictly 
to all the requirements made of them by these statutes and 
capitulations, thus avoiding any possibility of legal inter- 
ference with their work. For more than half a century 
they prospered and made progress without much interfer- 

1 " Capitulations of 1740 granted to Louis XIV. ; extended to 
England in same century, confirmed by British-Turkish treaty of 
1809 ; applied to other Christian powers by most favored nation 
clauses (to United States in 1831) ; and incorporated by Abd-ul- 
Aziz into the general legislation of the Empire by edict in 186* 
See Van Dyck on Capitulations in Senate Doc, 1880-81, Vol. 3." 



312 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

ence. The three predecessors of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II.. 
— Mahmud 11. (1808-1839), Abd-ul-MedJid (1839-1861), 
and Abd-ul-Aziz (1861-1876) — "'recognized in varying de- 
grees the fact that the Empire depended for its prosperity 
upon that of its Christian population. Education, en- 
lightenment, general peace and quiet were maintained 
among these populations and the work of foreign missions, 
both Catholic and Protestant, was tolerated and indeed to 
some extent encouraged, as contributing to the common 
welfare." ^ 

The reversal of this policy by Abd-ul-Hamid after the 
Eusso-Turkish war has already been noted. The ever-in- 
creasing pressure exerted against the missionaries and their 
enterprises has also been indicated. The new policy as 
brought to bear upon the American missions reached its 
extreme emphasis at the close of 1895 and the opening of 
1896, in the Sultanas threefold test of the strength of his 
own position and of the weakness of the American Govern- 
ment, — first, in the destruction of the mission buildings, 
and the pillage of the mission at Kharput ; second, in the 
like work, nine days later, at Marash ; third, in the arrest 
of the Eev. Mr. Knajip and the breaking up of the mission 
at Bitlis. The results of that test will doubtless have a 
most important bearing on the future of American missions 
in the Turkish Empire. The manner in which the case of 
Mr, Knapp has been dealt with has gone far toward con- 
firming the Sultan in the determination to carry out the 
purpose he had formed. Mr. Knapp " was seized without 
process of law ; imprisoned without trial ; refused permis- 
sion to communicate either with the nearest American 
Consul or with the Legation ; and when, at last, the facts 
were learned by our representatives, the demand for his 

1 See The Outlook, February 27, 1897, for a strong statement 
of the case — especially since the reactionary policy was begun, — 
by a distinguished American, neither a clergymen nor a mission- 
ary, but once a resident of Constantinople. 



CONCLtrSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 313 

speedy trial at Constantinople in the presence of the 
American Charge d 'Aii'aires on the one hand, or his in- 
stant release on the other, was treated with utter contempt/' 
Meanwhile preparations were made by the Turkish Govern- 
ment to deport him by stealth. Mr. Eiddle, the Charge 
d 'Affaires, in the perhaps fortunate absence of the 
American Minister, prevented the carrying out of the plot 
by his promptness in threatening to order up one of the 
three men-of-war in the Mediterranean for an aggressive 
demonstration. The American Minister returned to his 
post again, but when nine months had elapsed Mr. Knapp 
was still at Constantinople under charges, bub untried, 
neither convicted nor free. Our Government has not forced 
the matter to an issue. The Porte is satisfied. It has 
wrecked the work at Bitlis. It has demonstrated to its 
own satisfaction that our Government is either too craven 
or too heathen to protect our missionaries, and that it is 
either unwilling or unable to vindicate its own honor or to 
protect its citizens in Turkey in the exercise of their rights 
and the enjoyment of their liberties. 

In connection with these and other outrages, and with 
the awful and long continued massacres of the Armenian 
Christians, missionary boards, great ecclesiastical bodies, 
and various church organizations, have appealed again and 
again to the Government at Washington pleading the in- 
terests, not only of American citizens, but of Christianity 
and humanity, and yet for more than two years it re- 
mained silent as the Sphinx. Ever since it has professed 
to act it has, up to date, nothing to show for it but the 
facile promise of the promisef ul Turk. The Government 
gave abundant evidence of its readiness to bluster and to 
bully Great Britain in insignificent affairs while the Arme- 
nian butcheries were on ; it has since nobly poured out vast 
treasures of blood and gold to free the oppressed Roman 
Catholic subjects of Spain in the Antilles and in the Phil- 
ippines ; but in this greatest and saddest crisis in the his- 
tory of modern Christendom it has done practically nothing ! 



314 THE CEIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

The craven and disgraceful course of our Government — 
carried out by agencies apparently as innocent of Christian 
ideas and principles as the heathen Turk himself — demon- 
strated to Abd-ul-Hamid that he might undertake without 
fear the prosecution of his " deliberate plan to make the 
situation of the American missionaries intolerable, and to 
break up their magnificent work, by constant violation of 
law and treaty stipulation, by false accusations, personal 
violence, and deliberate denial of justice at every point/^ 
It has apparently left it only a question of time and oppor- 
tunity how and when American missions with all their re- 
sults shall be swept out of the Turkish Empire. 

And just here comes in the increase and stress of re- 
sponsibility. The recent agitation in the United States 
has been widespread • and helpful. No one would detract 
in the slightest from its importance. The press, the plat- 
form and the pulpit have done nobly. The work of the 
Belief Associations has been heroic, resulting in the saving 
of the lives of tens of thousands of the victims of Turkish 
cruelty. But the recent turn in the Turkish policy has 
brought to light the fact that there is a duty far higher 
than even that of feeding the starving wretches that 'de- 
serve such profound compassion, — the duty of rousing the 
people and the Government and Christendom 
Duty. ^0 the task of removing the cause of all the 
want and woe, by letting Turkey and Europe 
and the world understand that the hour has come for the 
cessation of such savagery and butchery. American Chris- 
tians are bound, by their missionary relations to Turkey, 
to safeguard the work of their missions, and to see to it 
that the Turkish Capitulations and Treaties are carried out. 
In this vast enterprise, however, if the result is to be hope- 
ful, they will be obliged to combine with the Christians of 
Great Britain and of the Continent in a moral movement 
that shall dwarf the impulse of the greatest of the Crusades 
in its energy, intensity and momentum. What Christian 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 315 

in the broad world can say touching this matter : "Am I 
my brother's keeper ? " 

In conchision, whatever may be the immediate or ulti- 
mate outcome, whatever may be the guilt of the Sultan and 
his minions, the crime before which all others sink into 
insignificance, is the Crime of Christendom in permitting 
these Tuvhish atrocities to continue — rather, in insuring 
their continuance — through the greater part of the century ! 
Christendom — especially British Christendom — cannot es- 
cape the responsibility for the Nestorian and Bulgarian hor- 
rors, and for the Armenian horrors, and for the Cretan and 
Greek horrors, and for all the horrors yet to be visited 
upon the Christians in Turkey before the day of deliver- 
ance shall dawn. Nor can American Christendom pleaid 
" Not guilty.'' 

What can be done to arouse and give force and sweep to 
the tide of moral sentiment that shall reverse the present 
diabplical order of things ? 

How can " the whole circle of Christian nations that are 
standing as idle spectators of these infernal orgies " be 
brought to understand what is going on, and be brought 
to feel their responsibility for it ? How can the Christians 
of Christendom be made to understand that the policy of 
swift extermination of the Christians of Turkey is the set- 
tled policy of Abd-ul-Hamid, — a policy to which he was 
driven by the representations of his chosen counsellors that 
the opposite course pursued by his predecessors through 
more than half a century had simply resulted in loss and 
gradual dismemberment of his Empire, and could only end 
in its destruction, and in which he has been encouraged by 
the entire conduct of the so-called Christian Powers in 
dealing with himself and the Eastern Question ? 

How can Christians be made to realize that this plan of 
extermination has already gone far on in its execution, so 
that the rich and the powerful and the intelligent over the 
great Armenian Plateau and in other portions of Turkey 



316 THE CRIME OF CHRISTENDOM. 

have already been destroyed, and few bat the weak and the 
ignorant are left ? 

To use the language of an appeal sent out three years and 
more ago from one of the largest cities in the Empire to the 
Christian^ nations : *^How can they be made to know that, 
horrible and revolting as was the savagery of the recent 
massacres, they have been narrow in effect and tame in cruel 
barbarity compared with the deliberate, malicious and 
unrelenting, crushing and grinding process to which the 
remnants of the Armenian people are being subjected ? " 

How can they be made to understand that, unless pre- 
vented by a powerful hand, the massacres and the grinding 
process of destruction and extinction will inevitably be ex- 
tended over Asia Minor and Syria and all European Turkey ? 

How can Christendom be made to feel that there is some- 
thing due to these millions of oppressed Christians, Ar- 
menian, Greek and Slavic, from those of the same faith the 
world over, — something more than mere sentiment or the 
gift of food to the hungry and perishing ? 

Is the day ever to come "when law-loving Christian 
Europe can purchase peace at a less exorbitant j)rice than 
the perpetuation of an infamous system of cold-blooded 
crime in the East ? " 

From wretched Armenia and stricken Crete and bleeding 
Greece and the despairing Christians of the rest of Turkey, 
the appeal comes to-day with a wail that ought to pierce 
the ears of the deaf and almost wake the dead : 

Can Christian Europe he made to understand our con- 
dition'^ Has Christian America lost interest in freedom 
and humanity ? Is the Christiayi Church asleep f Is 
Christianity effete ? Is God temporarily off His throne ? 
Or is He dead? 

1 See this appeal in Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities, 
by the Rev. Edwin Munsell Bliss. Hubbard Publishing Co., Pub- 
lishers, Philadelphia, Pa. 



CONCLUSIONS, POSSIBILITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES. 317 

What is to be the response of the Christian World ? Will 
it arise in its might and force the hands of its indifferent 
or unrighteous Governments ? Will it do what it can to 
atone for " The Crime of Christendom/^ and to wipe this 
unspeakably dark blot from the face of the globe by bring- 
ing to a perpetual end the rule of the '^unspeakable 
Turk'' ? Or will the real Christendom look on with in- 
effective, sentimental protest, while Ofl&cial Christendom 
stands by and sustains the Ottoman in the perpetration of 
still greater atrocities in blotting out the Christian and the 
Armenian names in his Empire, and possibly in the procla- 
mation of a Jihad that shall lead to a general war that may 
shatter the power of Christian Europe ? 



INDEX. 



Abbas I., the Great, 147 

Abd-el-Kader, at Damascus, 8g 

Abd-ul-Aziz, Qi ; 312 

Abd-ul-Hamid, skillful Diplomatist, 139 ; 
Treacher)' in Reform Scheme, 213 ; in 
Constantinople Massacre, 223 ; Respon- 
sibility for Armenian Bloodshed, 233 ; 
Supreme in the Palace, 233 ; the aim of 
his Policy, 233 ; Restoring Islam, 266, 
26S ; Present Power and Purpose, 291 ; 
Ruling purpose, 306 ; Reversal of Policy 
toward Missions, 312 

Abd-ul-Medjid, 269; 312 

Abgar of Edessa and Apostle Thaddeus, 204 

Abolition of Turkish Rule, 277 ; Would it 
mean War? 2 78 

Abu Hanbal, Imam, 15 

Achikian, Mgr., Resignation of, 189 

Aga, or Turkish Proprietor, 92 

Akbar, Legend concerning, 148 

Ak Hissar, Massacre at, 202 

Albania, its Peoples, 122 

Albistan, Massacre at, 203 

Alexander of Macedon, 145 

Alexander II., 25, 26; His Reorganization 
of Russia, 26 ; His liberal Movement, 26, 
31, 34; His great Task and his Death, 
35, 67 ; Time of his Accession, 71 ; 
Forced into War, 124 ; Motives in Russo- 
Turkish War, 129 

Ali Pasha, 52 

Allied Powers, and Autonomy of Ser\ia, 
119 

American Board C. F. M. in Turkey, 152 

American Missions, and the New Turkish 
Policy, 77 ; Sentiment on Armenian Mas- 
sacres, 220; Present Crisis in, 311 : "The 
Outlook" on, 312; Turkish Guaranties 
to, 311 ; Government, its Turkish Policy, 
313 ; Christians, Present Duty of, 314 



American Presbyterian Church, in Persia, 

153 

" Anabasis " of Xenophon, 145 

Andrassy Note, 100, 103, 104 

Appeal, of the Slavs, 100 ; of Lucine Mus- 
segh, 184 ; of all Christians in Turkey, 316 

Arabic Proverbs, 13 

Araxes River, 155 

Argyll, Duke of, 31,93, 94, 130, 260 

Armatoli, in Albania, 52 

Armenia, Name Prohibited in Turkey, 142 ; 
Derived from Aram, 143 ; its Great Pla- 
teau, 143 ; Early Vicissitudes, 144 ; Revolt 
under Artaxias, 146; Embraces Chris- 
tianity, 146; its Christian Historj', 146; 
and the Saracens, 147 ; Successive Dev- 
astations, 147 ; National Ambitions, 163 ; 
Physical Features in Turkey, 166: No 
Escape from, for Christians, 166 ; Possible 
Autonomy, 2S8 

Armenian Christians, without Sympathy in 
Christendom, 177 ; beyond the Reach of 
Help, 177 ; Oppression from tlie Treaty 
of Berlin, 177 ; Reduced to Poverty, 1S2 ; 
Imprisonment of, 1S5 : Confiscation of 
Property, 1S7 ; Destitution of, 228, 231 

Armenian Church, 148 : its Antiquity, 14S ; 
its Founder, 148; its Doctrines, 149; 
Separation from Greek Church, 149; its 
Order, 150; its Literature, 151 

Armenian Circular to the Embassies, 237 

Armenian Crisis, 47 ; Helps to L'nderstand- 
ing, 141 ; and the Massacres, 179 

Armenian Enterprise in Transcaucasia, 159 ; 
Renaissance, 161 

Armenian Massacres, 140; Compared with 
American Civil War, 229 ; Statistics Con- 
cerning, 230 ; a Revi\-al of Moslem Holy 
Law, 231 ; by Order of the Sultan, 232 ; 
Turkish Reasons for, 232 



320 



INDEX. 



Armenian Problem, Factors in, 167 ; Com- 
plications of, 1 68 

Armenian Question in Turkey, its Kernel, 
174: Another Aspect of, 175, 252 

Armenian Race, 141 ; Origin of, 142 ; Pros- 
perity in Russia, 157 

Armenians, Memoir to the Great Powers, 
123 ; in the Treaty of Berlin, 136 ; in the 
Eastern Question, 139 ; the Turk Let 
Loose upon, 140 ; Intensely Religious, 
151 ; Scattered Condition, 152 ; Number 
Estimated, 152 ; in Persia, 153 ; Condi- 
tion in Persia, 154 ; in Russia, 155 ; Dis- 
tribution in Transcaucasia, 156 ; Under 
Russian Rule, 158 ; Averse to Russian 
Modes of Thought, 160 ; in Turkey, 165 ; 
on the Plateau, 165 ; Scattered over 
Turkey, 175 ; Estimated Number in 
Turkey, 175 ; Two Stages in Oppression, 
187 ; " Protection " by Turks, 205 ; Con- 
version by Turks, 206 ; Helplessness of, 
227 

Arsacid Dynasty, 146 

As Shafi, Imam, 15 

Austro-Hungarian View of Bulgarian 
Situation, 103 

Austria-Hungary, 44 

B 

Baird, Dr. Robert, and Bible in Russia, 31 

Balance of Power, 45, 57 

Balkans, Massacres hi the, 90; Rising in 

the, 95 
Baring, Mr., EngHsh Consul, 93, 95, 96 
Baron Aghajan, the Persian Martyr, 154 
Barrett, Rev. Dr., on Present Eastern 

Policy, 302 
Bashi-Bazouks, 96 ; Ordered to Massacre, 

235 
Batak, Incident at, 93 ; Massacre at, 96 
Batum, Cession of to Russia, 137 
Beaconsfield, 75, loi ; and Conference of 
Constantinople, no, 131 ; as Marplot, 
133 ; at the Berlin Congress, and the 
Jingo cry, 134 ; and the Secret Treaties, 
137; Legacy to England, 138; First-Fruits 
of Legacy, 141, 298. See Disraeli. 
Beder Khan Bey, Butcher of Nestorians, 59 
Berlin Tageblatt, on Constantinople Mas- 
sacre, 224 
Beust, Count, on Andrassy Note, 105 



Bible Movement in Russia, 31 

Bible, Translation of, 26 ; Circulation in 

Russia, 31; in Old Armenian, 149 
Bidwell, Rev. W. H., on Bible in Russia, 

31 

Bismarck, 128, 132, 134. 

BitUs, Massacre at, 203 ; Wrecking of Mis- 
sions at, 312 

Black Clergy, in Armenian Church, 150. 

Black George, 22, 119 

Blind, Carl, on Polish Insurrection, 31 

Bliss, Rev. E. M., on the Erzrum Mas- 
sacre, 209 

Bloody November of '95, 209 

Bloody October of '95, 202 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, go, 95, 104, 106, 
116; Original Insurgents in, 119; 136 

Bosnia, Insurrection in, 104; Peoples of, 
119 

Brice, Mr. James, View of English Re- 
sponsibility, 234 

Bright, John, 97 

British Government, Supporting the Sultan, 
131; Ordering Fleet to Constantinople 

132 

British Influence, Decline in Europe, 126; 
in Turkey, 127 

British Interest, 109 

British Interests, 61,65, 99,109; Require- 
ments of, 126, 254 

British Jingoism, in Congress of Berlin, 136 

British Opposition, to Christian Europe, 
105 ; To Berlin Memorandum, loS ; to 
Conference of Constantinople, no; to 
Jingoism, 131 ; to Russo-Turkish War, 

131 
" British Weekly," 302 
Brodhead, Mr. J. Milliken Napier, View 

of Crimean War, 8r 
Brotherhood, Russian Idea of, 33 
Brown, Rev. J. K., Eghin Past and Present, 

228 
Buckle, Mr. H. T., on Mohammed, 13 
Bulgaria, in the Treaty of Berlin, 135 
Bulgarian Atrocities, 95 ; Gladstone on, 97 
Butchery in Armenia, in 1894, 179; Events 

Leading to it, iSo 
Butcheries, in 1895, 199; in 1897, 220 
Byron, Lord, in Greek Revolution, 53, 55 
Byzantines, Compared with the Turks, 17; 

The Hope of the World, 19 



INDEX. 



321 



Catharine II., Her Defeat of Turkey, 6i 

Catholikos, Megerditch Khrimian, liis Char- 
acter, 1 60; Election of, 162 ; Makar, 164; 
Resignation of, 189 

Central Belt of Turkish Armenia, i6g; its 
Peoples, i6g 

Chambers, Rev. Mr., His Testimony, 207 

Charles Martel, at the Battle of Tours, 2 

Chefik Bey, 195 

Chefkat Pasha, 102 

Chios, 54. See Scio. 

Christendom, slowly Awakening, 295 ; Up- 
rising of, 296 

" Christian Advocate, New York " View of 
the Turk, 221 

Christian England, 41 ; Against Crimean 
War, 69 ; 75 

Christian Europe, in the Toils of Diploma- 
cy, 140 

Christian PoVers, in the Eastern Question, 
48; their Blunder in the Greek Revolu- 
tion, 48 ; thoroughly Roused on the East- 
ern Question, 105 ; Decision against the 
Porte, IIS ! Subservient to the Porte, 238 

Christians of Turkey, Betrayed in the 
Crimean War, 73 ; Rights of Property 
not Secured, 92 ; no justice for, 93 ; Mos- 
lem Conversion of, 218 

Christians, Relief Proposed for, 107; Ter- 
rorized, 291 

Chiysostom, 16, 29 

Churchill, Colonel, 86 

Clarendon, Lord, 71 

Collective Note, of Austria, 100 ; to Turkey, 
no; to the Porte in 1896, 235 ; Testimony 
to Sultan's Guilt, 236 

Commercial England, 40, 61 ; Repudiating 
the Memorandum, 65 ; Against the 
Prince's Memorandum, 70 ; Responsibility 
for Turkey as a Power, 78, 97, 100, 108, 

134, 178 
Commercial Pressure and Armenia, 180 
Commission of Inquiry, into Sassun, 195, 

262 ; into Armenia Deportation, 237 
Concert of Europe, 45 ; Gladstone on, 45, 
139; ill the Armenian Crisis, 235 ; Hope- 
lessness of, 260; Nature and Aims, 260; 
its Moral Failure, 261 :its Recent Phase ; 
262 ; Results for Despotism, 263 ; Results 
for the Sultan, 264 



Conclusions Established, 256 

Conference of Constantinople, 100 ; its Pro- 
posals, 109; Failure of, 112 

Congress of Berlin, 134; Beaconsfield at 
134 i Questions Involved, 134 

Constantine, i; Paljcologus, 3, 19; Grand 
Duke, 66 

Constantinople, Three Historic Epochs, i ; 
Results of its Fall, 3 ; its Rescue from 
the Russian, 6 ; the Forlorn Hope of the 
World, 19 ; Massacre at, 222 

Constitution of Nicholas for Armenia, 162 

Consular Delegation, opposed by Beacons- 
field, lOI 

Consular Reports Suppressed, 188 

Convention of Paris, 118 

Cossack, Pen Pictures of, 24 

Council of Toledo, 2 

Count Schouvaloff, 114 ; Proposed Proto- 
col, 114 

Courts of Justice in Turkey, 93 

Cretan, Uprising and what Led to it, 240 ; 
Heroism, 245 

Crete, and the Islands of the .lEgean, 122 
Turkish Conquest of, 242 ; in Greek Rev- 
olution, 243 ; Under the Turk, 244 ; 
Blockaded by Allied Powers in 1830, 
244 ; Successive Risings in, 244 ; Bis- 
marck's View of its Freedom, 245; Present 
Revolt in, 246; Treatment of by the 
Powers, 247 

Crimean War, 9, 25, 46; its Origin, 58; 
Turkish Barbarities Preceding, 58; 
Against Russia's Treaty-right, 60 ; Rous- 
ing of Russia, and Course of Diplomacy, 
67; its Immediate Results, 71 ; Respon- 
sibility for, 73 ; Remoter Results, 76 ; 
Narrow Limits and Russia's Success in 
Asia, 72 ; Summary of Results of, 73 

Crime of the Century, Resting on the Real 
Christendom, 308 

Crises of the Century, 9 

Crusaders, their Capture of Constanti- 
nople, 17 

Cyprus as a Bribe, 137 

Cyril and Methodius, 32 

Cyrus the Great, 144 

D, 

Danube, Control of Mouths of, 118 
Danubian Principalities, 71 
Darius the Great, and Armenia, 145 



322 



INDEX. 



Deir-el- Kamr, Massacre at, 88 

Destitution of the Armenians, 231 
. Diarbekr, Massacre at, 203 

Dillon, Dr., 182 ; Report of, 184, 185, 187 ; 
Account of Preparation for Extermina- 
tion, 190. 

Diplomacy, Iniquitous, 45 ; Failure of, 256 ; 
the Game of, 257 ; Recent Rumors Re- 
garding, 293 

Diplomatic, Struggle of " Christian Eu- 
rope" with " Commercial England," 99; 
Movement in Europe, 126. 

Dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, 
281 ; Schemes Proposed for, 283 ; Sug- 
gestions regarding, 285 ; Settled Con- 
ditions of, 287 ; Effects of Gradual, 301 ; 
Decisive Action in, 301 

Disraeli, and the Balkan Rising, 95 ; Out- 
vi'itting Christian England, 97. See 
Beaconsfield 

Dixon, Mr. Hepworth, 32 

Document of Grievances, of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, 100 

Donaldson, Dr., on the Powers and the 
Greek Revolution, 55 

Draper, Mr. J. W., on Rise of Islam, 13. 

Druses, 87 

Duff, M. E. Grant, 25, 27, 28; View of 
Alexander II., 129. 

Duke of Westminster, in the " Forward 
Movement,'' 298 

E. 

Eastern Question, What is it ? 7 ; Its Rise, 
7 ; Moral Point of View, 8 ; Political 
Point of View, 9 ; View of Non-Turkish 
Peoples, 10; Christian Point of View, n ; 
Peoples Involved, 12 ; Madame Novi- 
koff's View, 33 ; New Outbreak in 1877-7S, 
79 ; An Obstacle Removed, 113 ; Armenian 
Phase, 141; Present Greek Phase, 253; 
Failure of Diplomacy in, 256; A Question 
of Morals, 288; Present Possibilities, 290 ; 
Elements now Involved, 290 ; Present 
Critical Condition of, 306 

Eastern Empire, its Unique Place in the 
World, 19 

Edessa, and Apostle Thaddeus, 204 

Eghin, Massacre at, 227; Past and Pres- 
ent, 228 

Elements in the Present Struggle, 290 

Elliot, Sir H., 96, 283 

Emancipation Proclamation, 26 



Embassies, Apathy of, 225 ; Non-interven- 
tion of, 227 ; Declhiing to Illuminate, 236 ; 
Roused by Danger to Bonds, 304 

England, and the Orient, 42 ; John Ruskin's 
Estimate of, 42 ; Her Broken Pledge, 
87 ;. Encouragement of the Turk, 1 1 1 ; 
and Russia, 114; Responsibility for Fate 
of Armenia, 139, 234; Reasons for Guilt, 
234; Responsibility for Condition of 
Crete, 246; Responsibility for the Dead- 
lock, 259 

" England's Responsibility to Armenia " 
quoted, 83, 84, 260 

" England's Hand in Turkish Massacres," 
269 

Englands, The Two Characterized, 41 

English Perfidy, 43 

Ephraim, the Syrian, 204 

Equality of Christian and Moslem in Tur- 
key, 176 

Erivan, 155, 156, 159 

Erzingan, Massacre at, 202 

Erzrum, Gateway to Asia Minor, 155 ; Ar- 
menian Emigrants through, 157; Situ- 
ation of, 206 ; Inhabitants Surprised, 206 ; 
Center of Huntchakists, 207 

Etchmiadzin, 142; Armenian Church Cen- 
ter, 150; Residence of Archbishops, i6o; 
Center of Armenian Education, 161 

European Powers, and Eastern Question, 
45 ; Interest in Partition of Turkey, 285 ; 
Conscienceless, 292 

European Turkey, Survey of its Peoples, 
99.117 

Europe, Cossack or Turk? 293 

Events, Three Pivotal, i, 2, 6 

F. 

Facts Suppressed by Governments, 209. 

Failure of the Three Hatts, 269 

Fall of Constantinople, Changing the Des- 
tiny of the World, 6 ; Bringing England 
to Front, 6 ; Apparent Death of Christian 
Hope, 20 

Farming the Taxes, 91 

Ferdinand and Isabella Expelling the 
Moors, 5 

Ferik Pasha, 193 

Filioque Doctrine, and Separation of East- 
ern and Western Churches, 2, 150 

Finlay, History of Greek Revolution, 54 

Flint, Professor Robert, 13 



INDEX. 



323 



Forster, W. E., 90, 279 

" Forward Movement," 46 ; to Take East- 
ern Question out of Politics, 221, 290; 
Following Non-Party Movement, 297; 
Mr. Russell's Account of, 297 ; Cutting 
Loose from Lord Salisbury, 29S ; Effects 
of, 299; Present Necessity for, 309 

Fourth Crusade Characterized, 49, 242 

France and the Eastern Question, 44 

Francis L, 22, 62 

Franco-Prussian War, 37 

Freeman, Edward A., 28; on the Bulgarian 
Massacres 98; on the Slavic Crisis 120; 
on the Russo-Turkish War, 123, 129, 130 

French Revolution, 33 

Fuad Pasha, 276 

G. 

Galata, Massacre in, 224 

Galogozan, Barbarities at, 193 

Game of Reform, After Sassun, 195 

Gazdalik, See Hospitality Tax. 

Gennadius, M. J., Sketch of Cretan history, 
241 ; Story of Heroism, 245 

Germanos, Archbishop of Patros, 52 

Germany, and the Eastern Question, 44 ; 
Judgment against Turkey, 129 

Gibbon, the Historian, ig 

Gladstone, View of Turkish Mohammedan- 
ism, 15, 21, 28, 45 ; Summary of Turk- 
ish Outrages, 53, 61, 85 ; Rousing Chris- 
tian England, 97 ; Cure for Turkish 
Oppression, 97, 129 ; View of " Integrity 
of Turkey," 138 ; in the " Forward 
Movement," 221 ; on the Constantinople 
Massacres, 238 ; Admiration of Greece, 
241 ; Letter to Duke of Westminster, 
248 ; View of " Integrity of Ottoman 
Empire," 248 ; on the two Emperors, 
249 ; Policy toward the Turk, 277 ; Let- 
ters to Captain Dampzes, 293 ; In 1876, 
296 ; Letter to Duke of Westminster, 298 

Gomer, Descendants of, 142 

Gonipalo de Cordova, 5 

Gortschakoff, Evacuation of Sebastopol, 71, 
no, H3 

Graham, Mr. Cyrill, investigation in Syria, 

87 

Grseco-Turkish War, 250 
" Great Assassin," Protected by Christian 
Europe, 194 ; His Guilt wiih that of 
Christian Europe, 194 ; Giving Respite 



in Armenia, 220 ; Characterized by Glad- 
stone, 238 
Great Britain, Seizure of Strategic Points, 
38 ; Character and Course, 40 ; Respon- 
sibility for Greek Woes, 56 ; an Asiatic 
Power, 61 ; Precipitates Crimean War 
71 ; Responsibility for Syrian Massacres, 
85; Effect of Crimean War on, 125; 
Dual Character in Slavic Crisis, 128 ; 
Responsibility for Armenians, 221 ; and 
Isolated Action, 267 ; Interests in the 
Orient, 286 ; Can she be Roused, 300; 
Responsibility to Christian in Turkey, 

31S 

Great Powers, on Syrian Massacres, 89 ; 
Against England, 109, no; at the Cri- 
mean War, 125 ; at Blind Man's Buff, 
199 ; Selfishness in Dealing with Ar- 
menia, 227 ; Transformed into " The 
Weaknesses," 240 ; Responsible with 
Turkey, 308 

Great Upheaval, Possibilities of a, 305 

Greece, in the Treaty of Berlin, 135 ; Limi- 
tation in the Interest of Turkey, 140 ; 
and the Powers, 246 ; in the Present 
Struggle, 294 

Greek Agonies, Donaldson's Account of, 

50 

Greek Belt, of Turkey, 121 ; Peoples of, 
122 

Greek Church, Separation from the Latin, 
2 ; its History and Influence, 4 ; its Ad- 
mirable Elements, 30 ; behind the Czar, 
130 

Greek Empire, Weakened by Crusades, 17 

Greek Freedom, and the Accident of Na- 
varino, 55 

Greek Literature, Preserved by Armenians, 

151 
Greek race, in the Eastern Question, 48 ; 

Secret of its Survival, 51 ; Used by the 

Turk, 51 
Greek Rising and Independence, 52 
Greek Revolution, 9, 46, 48 ; Failure of 

the Powers in, and Wellington's Opinion, 

56 
Gregorian Church, on the Plateau, 170 
Gregory of Nazianzen, Description of Con- 
stantinople, 2 
Gregory the Illuminator, 148 ; First Bishop 

of Sis, 148 ; His successors as Patriarch 

and Catholikos, 149 



324 



INDEX. 



Green, J. R., on Effect of Crimean War on 

Great Britain, 125 
Greene, Rev. Frederick Davis, Account of 

Sassun, igi ; Detailed Statement, 193 ; 

Letter from Erzrum to, 208 
Gulesian, Mr. M. H., Comparison of Russia 

and England, 259 
Gulhane, The Proclamation of, 22 

H. 

Hadji Islan, at Zeitun, 214, 216 
Hadji-Osman Pasha, in Crete, 243 
Haiks, or Haikan, 143 
Hallward, Mr. on the Victims at Sassun, 

192 
Hamidieh, Organized by Abd-ul-Hamid, 

173 ; Their character, 173 ; Employed at 

Sassun, 182 ; in 1895, 201 ; Present 

Status, 291 
Hampson, Consul, Report of, 183 
Hanifa, Abou, His system, 15 ; Worst form 

of Mohammedanism, 15 
Hanifite Jurists, Views of, 15, 17 
Harris, Prof. Rendel, on Present British 

Policy, 302 
Hasbeia, Massacre at, 87 
Hatt, of 1839, 269 ; of 1856 ; of 1878, 273 ; 

Another Proposed, 277 
Hatti-i-Humayoun, Twenty Years of, 80 ; 

Left out of Treaty, 80 ; InefEectual, 94, 

103, 113, 273 
Hatt-i-SherifE, of 1856, 74 ; Knell of Chris. 

tian Hope, 75, 103 ; of Gulhane, 173 ; 

Its Failure, 269 
Hellenic Belt of Turkey, Peoples of, 123 
Herschel, View of England's Situation, 42 
Herzen, the Russian Wit, 25 
Herzegovinan Insurgents, Paper to Powers, 

Himayak, Mgr., Temporary Patriarch, igo 
'■ A History of Our Own Times," quoted, 

8, 63, 64, 88, 95, 112, 134, 137, 15s 
Holmes, Sir. H. Elliott, False report by, 

lOI 

Holy Alliance, 26 ; Modem, of the Three 

Kaisers, 292 
Holyoake, Jacob George, Inventor of 

" Jingo," 132 
Holy Places, at Jerusal em, 58 ; Designated 

62 ; Claims of Russia and France to, 62 
Hopeful Features of the Situation, 266 
Hospitality Tax, 83, 176 ; in Armenia, 182 



Humiliation Tax, 83 
Huntchak Party, Aims of, 215 
Hussein Agha, His Brutality, 183 
Hussni Bey, and Ludne Mussegh, 184 
Hjrpsilantes, Prince Alexander, 52 



Ibrahim Pasha, 85 ; Mussulman Rage at, 
86 ; Establishes Equality, in Syria, 86 

Identical Communications, 199 

Imperial Irade, Accepting Scheme of Re- 
forms, 200 ; Provisions of, 200 

India, the Source of Wealth, 5 ; New 
Routes to, 6 

Indian Troops ordered to Malta, 137 

Insurrection, False Rumors of, igi 

" Integrity of the Turkish Empire," 45 ; 
Confirmed by Treaty of Paris, 74 ; En- 
gland's Controlling Policy, 139 ; Mr. 
Gladstone on, 248 

Intuitive Morality, Applied to the Eastern 
Question, 289 ; Resulting " Forward 
Movement," 290 

Irad^, of October 2d, 103, 105 ; To Distract 
Attention and Signal the Massacre, 201 ; 
Authorizing Special Commission in 1896, 
237 

Islam, Enslaving the Eastern Church, 3 ; 
the " Southern Reformation, 13 ; Various 
Estimates of, 13 

Isolated Action in Eastern Question, 238 ; 
By the Powers, 261 

Ivan III. and Constantinople, 33 

Izmirlian, 195 



Jacobite Christians, 204 

Janizaries, 16, 21, 119 

Jewish Mephistopheles, 140 

Jihad, or Holy War, Possibilities of, 291, 

317 
Jingoism, and Reaction, 128 ; British, 131 
" Jingoes," Origin of, 132 
Judicial system. Reorganization of Russian, 

27 

K. 

Kars, Surrender of, 131 
Kashas Bobaca, Auraham, and Kana, 60 
Key to Universal Empire, 144 
" Khalif another Khedive," Threat of the 
Powers, 304 






INDEX. 



325 



Khalif Omar, 83 

Kharput, a Center of Massacres, 211, 229 ; 
Statistics concerning Destruction of Mis- 
sion, Property at, 230 312 ; 

Khutbali, not said for Sultan out of 
Turkey, 279 

Kireeff, General Alexander, 33 

Kizzilbashes, 169 ; their Religion, 171 

Klephts, or Brigands, 52 

Knapp, Rev. Mr., Case of, 312 

Koran, Influence of, 14, 15 ; Prohibits 
Arms to Christians, 84 ; Excludes Testi- 
mony of Christians against Moslems, 84 

Koum Kapu Cathedral, meeting in and 
Petition, igg ; Massacre following, igg 

Kurdistan, as Name for Armenia, 142 

Kurds, in the Nestorian Butcheries, 5g ; 
Stages of Development, 170 ; Genuine 
Sunni Mohammedans,' 171 ; Migratory 
Movements, 172 ; the Wilder Element, 
172 ; Permanent Settlement of, 173 ; 
Scourge of Armenian Christians, 173 ; 
Let Loose on the Armenians, 182 ; Massed 
at Mush for Sassun Massacre, 192 

Kurtz, Prof. J. H., 29 

Kutchuk-Kainardji, Treaty of, 60 ; Acknowl- 
edged by England, 61 ; Repudiated by 
Turkey, 68 



Layard, Sir Henry, Account of Nestorian 
Massacres, 59 ; in the Slavic Crisis, 131 

Lepsius, Professor, on Armenian Massacres, 
230 ; on their Causes, 231 

Light Brigade, Charge of, 81 

Lloyd, Consul Clifford, Report on Arme- 
nian Condition, 182 

Lobanoff, Prince, Views of, 235 

London" Daily News," on Attack on Otto- 
man Bank, 223 

London " Speaker," on the Powers and 
Urfa, 218 ; on Ottoman Bank Affair, 223 

London " Spectator," quoted, 2og, 225, 
228, 267 ; on Issue of New Bonds, 303 

London " Standard," 225 

London " Times," 278 

Lord Aberdeen, 64, 6g ; His Prediction, 75 

Lord Beaconsfield, 252. See Beaco7isfield 

Lord Derby, on Bulgarian Outrages, 96 ; 
Argument against Christian Powers, loi ; 
in Opposition to Europe, 105 ; Rejecting 
Pfrtw ^IeII^orandum, 107 ; against Arni- 



ing Christians, 108, log ; Duplicity of 

no, 114; Policy of Isolation, 117; His 

Compromise, 133 
Lord Dufferin, Visit to Syria, 89 
Lord Augustus Loftus, Note from Lord 

Derby to, 114 ; Report of Bismarck's 

Saying, 245 
Lord Rosebery, 297 
Lord John Russell, 61, 87 
Lord Salisbury, and the Jingo Policy, 133' 

252 ; Plea of England's Weakness, 267 
Lucine Mussegh, Vain Appeal of, 184 
Lynch, Mr. H. F. B., quoted, 155, 156, 157, 

159, 166, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174 

M 

MacColl, Canon, quoted, 18, 54, 66, 69, 83, 
84, go, loi, 102, 108, 109, 260, 270, 271 
272, 274, 276, 278, 298 

MacGahan, Mr., on Bulgarian Atrocities 

95. 129 

Mahmoud II., 22,269 

Mahomet, 14 

Mahomet II., 3, 21 

Malek, Imam, 15 

Marco Bozzaris, 53 

Maronites, 86 

Marquis of Montserrat, 242 

Marsovan, Christian College at, i8g ; Mar- 
tyrs at, i8g 

Martin, " Life of the Prince Consort," 69 

Massacre, at Sassun, 189 ; Planned by 
Turkish Government, 190 ; England Re- 
garded as Consenting to, igo ; Plan re- 
ported to British Representative before- 
hand, igo ; Slow Transpiring of Facts, 
192 ; Estimate of the Slain, 194 ; Subse- 
quent Events, 195 ; of i8gs. Organized by 
the Turks, 202 ; Across the Plateau, 203 ; 
at Urfa, 204; Birijik, 205 ; Erzrum, 206 ; 
Signalled by the Turk, 209 ; at Sivas, 

• 210 ; at Husenik, Arabkir, Malatia, 
Adish, Aivose, Bizmishan, Chunkush, 
Garmuri, Hokh, Huelu, Peri, Palu- 
Khoshmat, 211 ; at Constantinople, 222 ; 
Condition after, 228 

Massacres, Possibilities of Future, 294 

Max Miiller, 24 

McCarthy, Justin, quoted, S, 63, 64, 88, 95, 
112, 131, 134, 137 

Memorandum, of Nesselrode, 64 ; pf Prinqg 



326 



INDEX. 



Albert, 6g, 75 ; Berlin, Main Features, 
100-106 ; of Scheme of Reforms, ig6 

Mentschikoff, Prince, 68 

Michael Palseologus, 49 

Midhat Pasha, no ; View of the Protocol, 
117, 283 

Milosch, 22, 119 

Mirza Ibrahim, the Martyr, 154 

" Missionary Herald," quoted, 228 

Mithridates I., 146 

Mixed Commission Proposed, 107 

Mohammed Ali, 85 

Mohammedan Civilization, made a Fetich> 
12; Its Failure, 13 

Mohammedanism, Entrance into Europe, 
3 ; Spread over Eastern Church, 5 ; Its 
Degrading Influence, 14 ; Form akin to 
Jesuitism, 15 ; Latest Propaganda of, 306 

Mohammedan Official Prayer, 275 

Montenegro, 121 

Moors driven from Western Europe, 127 

Mount Ararat, Center of Plateau, 143 ; 
Center of Three Empires, 153 

Moslems, in Russia loyal to the Czar, 280 

Muir, Sir W., View of Islam, 14 

Multeka, The, 271 ; Supremacy of, 273 

Mustapha Pasha, in Crete, 245 

MutaziUtes, or Indian Freethinkers, 279 

N 

Napier, Sir Charles, 85 

Napoleon I., His Forgery, 36, 53 

Napoleon III., and the Crimean War, 62 

Navarino, Battle of, 55, 70 

Nazarbek, Story of Zeitun, 213 ; On the 

Huntchak Party, 215 
Neander, View of Mohammedanism, 14 
Nelidoff, M. de. Note to the Porte, 303 
Nesselrode, Chancellor, 64 
Nestorians, Massacre of, 59 ; Missions 

among, 154 
New Julfa, Armenians in, 147 
" Xew York Observer," View of American 

Duty, 221 
Nicholas of Russia, 31 ; His Character and 

Greatness, 63 ; Popularity in England, 

63 : Diagnosis of the " Sick Man," 64 ; 
' Understanding with Lord Aberdeen, 65 ; 

The Memorandum, 65 ; His Sudden 

Death, 71 
Nihilism, its Origin, 35 
Non-Party Movement, 297 



Noor-ed-Din, 204 

North Danube Belt, 118 ; Peoples of, 118 

Northern Belt of Turkish Armenia, 169 ; 

Peoples of, i6g 
NovikofE, Madame, on Russia, 33 

o 

Official England, 46 

Official Europe, 46, 292 

" Old Russia," 12 

''Old Turk," and Fanaticism, 23 ; Predomi- 
nant in the Empire, 284 

Olga, Queen, 28 

Orkhan, 17 

Orthodox, Russian Idea of, 33 

Osborn, Major, 14 

Osman Pasha, 60, 182 

Ottoman Empire, Disintegration of, 23; 
Sovereignty over Christians, 113; Char- 
acterized by William Watson, 179 

Ottoman Bank, Pretended Attack on, 222 ; 
Escape of Robbers, 223 ; Signal for Mas- 
sacre, 223 

Ottoman Parliament, 283 



Palgrave, Mr. Gifford, 93 

Palmerston, Lord, 6g, 70 : His diplomacy, 

70, 72, 75 ; Legacy to England, 79, 87 ; 

on Situation of Armenia, 239 
Palu, Massacre at, 203 
Pan-Islam, Dream revived by Turco-Greek 

War, 306 
Pan-Slavism, 28 
Pargiotes, Heroic, 53 
Parliamentary Papers, loi, 105, 106 
Patriarchs, Armenian, i4g ; Seats of, 150 
Peace of Adrianople, 3g 
" Peace with Honor," 138 ; With Infamy, 

Peoples involved in the Eastern Question, 

12 
Perils to Chastity, g2 
Persians, their Character, 154 
Peterson, Clemens, on Key to Russian 

Conduct, 32 
Phanariots, 21 
Philhellenes, English, 55 
Pichler, Dr., 17 
Plateau of Armenia, 143 ; Its Divisions, 

153 
Poland, Russian Policy in, 31 



INDEX. 



S27 



Powers, Pressure on the Porte, 109 ; Dis- 
heartened, 113; Responsibility for Zeitun 
217; Treatment of Crete, 247 

Preliminary Questions to Russo-Turkish 
War, 125 

Prince Albert, on the Crimean War, 126 

Professor Papparrhigopoulos, on the Slavic 
Rising, 123 

Proposals, of the Powers, 109; of Confer- 
ence of Constantinople, 112 

Protestant Missions in Armenia, 152 

Protocol, of Russia, 100 ; of Constantinople, 
100; of March 31, 113; of Count Schou- 
valoff, 114; Terms of Russian, 116; 
Signers of, 117 

Providential Change in Europe, 125 

Providential Resources, 301 ; Shown by 
Proposal of New Bonds, 303 

Public Opinion, Hope from, 268; Abd-ul, 
Hamid's Dread of, 268; Disregarded by 
the Powers, 268 

R. 

Raglan, Lord, His Pathetic Appeal, Si 

Rawlinson, on Origin of Races, 142 

Rayah, 91 ; Taxes upon, 92 

Reformation and Fall of Constantinople, 6 

Reign of Terror on Armenian Plateau, 183 

Religious Center of Armenia, 160 

Renaissance of Islam, 264 

Renan, Ernest, 13 

Responsibility, Suggestions of, 306 ; of the 
Turk, 306; of the Real Christendom, 308; 
of Europe, 309; of England, 310; of 
America, 311 

Results and Responsibilities, 229 

" Review of Reviews," quoted, 254 

Revival of Learning, 6 

Riddle, Mr., American Charge d' Affaires, 
313 

Romanoffs, Greatness of, 63 

Rosch, the Original Russ, 24 

Roumania, in Treaty of Berlin, 135 

Ruling Purpose of Sultan, 306 

Russia, View of the Eastern Question, 10 ; 
In the Eastern Question, 24 ; Regenerat- 
ed, 25 ; Its Religious Idea, 28 ; Defender 
of Greek Christians, the Key to her Con- 
duct, 32 ; Reactionary, 34 ; Expansion 
of, 36; Rights of, McClellan's view, 38; 
Ambitions of, 39 ; Judged by Deeds, 40 ; 
the only Obstacle to Turkey, 60 ; Warned 



out of Black Sea, 71 ; Proposed Terms of 
Coercion, no; and Results of Russo- 
Turkish War, 136 ; Need of Strong Hand, 
1 58; Taming Cossack and Kurd, 158! 
Right to Commercial Outlets, 2S6 

Russian Atrocities, Stories of, 128 

Russian Disclaimer of Desire for Constan- 
tinople, 66; Enthusiasm for Crimean 
War, 68; Circular, 115; Intervention, 
Way opened to, 125 ; Advance and Victory, 
131 ; Reaction, 158 

Russian Religion, Kurtz's view of, 29 ; 
Stanley's view of, 29 ; Gladstone's view 
of, 30 ; Duff's view of, 30 ; Wallace's 
view of, 31 ; Argyll's view of, 31 ; Idea, 
of Brotherhood, 33 ; Language in Arme- 
nian Schools, 163 ; Unwise Revolt against, 
163 ; School-system in Armenia, 164 

Russian, His Character and Purposes, 24 ; 
His Origin, 24 ; Western Notions of, 24 ; 
Duff's View of, 25 

Russo-Turkish War, 9 ; a War of the 
People, 28, 47, 79 ; Beginning of, 131 



Sacred Law of Islam, Forbids Arms to 

Christians, 176 ; Applied to Armenians, 

187 ; in the Multeka, 271 
Safvet Pasha III., Circular of, 115 
Salonica, Outbreak at, 106 ; Peoples of, 122 
San Stefano, 39, 43 ; See Treaty of. 
Sassanid Dynasty, 146 
Sassun, Outbreak at, 188 ; Massacre at, 189 
Schaff, Dr. Philip, quoted, i, 3, 32 
Scheme of Reforms, ig6 ; Features of, 196 • 

Rendered Abortive by the Porte, 198 ; 

Collective Note on, 198 ; Imperial Iride 

concerning, 200 

Schlosser, the Historian, 18 

Schuyler, Eugene, on Bulgarian Atrocities 

i 
120, 129 

Scio, Desolation of, 54 

Sebastopol, 25 ; Invested by the Allies, 71 ; 

Evacuated, 72 
Secret Treaties, 137 
Selim I., 85, 173 
Selim III., 22, 269 
Serf-Emancipation, Anticipating Lincoln's 

" Emancipation Proclamation," 26 ; Vast- 

ness of its Reach, 27 
Seymour, Sir. G. Hamilton, 65 



828 



INDEX. 



Shadow of the Irade, Butchery under, 201 

Shakir Pasha, igS 

" Shameful Misgovernment " in Armenia, 

182 
Shattuck, Miss, Missionary, 204 ; Account, 

of Urfa, 217 
Shaw, Dr. Albert, 254 
Shefik Effendi, President of Commission, 

200 
Sheik-ul-Islam, Appeal of Sultan to, 176 
Shylock, the British, gg ; the European; 

178, 305 i Renewed Call of, 220 ; Fearing 

Loss of the Bonds, 305 
" Sick Man," Turkey as the, 9 ; Turkey so 

named by Czar Nicholas, 64, 65 ; Sustained 

by Crimean War, 74 ; Partition of his 

Estate, 285 
Sinope, so-called Massacre of, 70 
Sivas, Massacre at, 210 
Slaughter of December, 1895, 217 ; Account 

by Miss Shattuck, 217 ; in London 

" Speaker," 218 
Slavic Crisis, 47 ; and Russo-Turkish War, 

79 ; Help to its Understanding, 98 
Slavic Belt of Turkey, 99, 118 ; Its Peoples, 

120 
Slavic or Bulgarian Version of Scriptures, 

32 

Slavonic Converts to Mohammedanism, 1 ig 

Slavophils, 28' 

Slavic Peoples, 118; in the Insurrection, 
121 

Slavs, 24 ; Behind the Czar, 130 

Smith, Philip, i, 19 

Smith, Prof. Goldwin, 16, 28 ; on Turkish 
Loans from Europe, 94 ; on Russo- 
Turkish War, 124 ; on Alexander II., 130 

Sobieski, John, Check of Ottoman Power, 
18 

Solution of Eastern Question, Things Es- 
sential to, 277 

Solyman, The Magnificent, 22 

Southern Belt of Turkish Armenia, and its 
Peoples, 170 

Spahi, Si. See Tithe-Farmer 

Sphakiots, of Crete, 52 

Spontaneous Extermination in Armenia, 
i8s 

Stages, in Emancipation of Christians, 46 ; 
in the Crime of Christendom, 140 

Stanley, Dean, 24, 29, 32 

Stead, Mr., on the Concert of Europe, 262 



Strained Relations in Transcaucasia, 165 

Stratford de Redcliffe, 18, 22, 68, 87, 90 

Sublime Porte, 17, 47, 68 ; Proposed Re- 
forms, 104 ; Reliance on Great Britain, 
igo ; Indifference to Scheme of Reforms, 
igS 

Suliots, Massacre of, 53 

Sultan, Pressure upon, 104 ; His Agents, 
234 ; Reply to Collective Note, 237 ; 
Advantages from the Concert, 264 ; Deal- 
ing with Disaffected Elements, 265 ; 
Destroying the Power of the Christians, 
265 ; Regeneration of Islam, 266 ; not the 
Sheikh-ul-Islam, 278; Rehabilitated, 2go ; 
Ready for renewed Slaughter, 305 ; Pri- 
marily Responsible for all Massacres, 307 

Synod of Armenian Church, 160 ; Action in 
Education, 164 

Syria, Delivered and Enslaved, 85 

Syrian Massacres, 85 

T. 

Tahyar Pasha, 59 

Talib Effendi, 186 

Talvoregg District, Massacre in, 194 

Tanzimat Kairieh, or Reforms of 1839, 23 

Taxes, and the Greek Uprising, 239 ; Re- 
quirements of Increased, 258 

Thaddeus, in Armenia, 148, 204 

"The Arena," quoted, 259 

" The Contemporary Review," quoted, 16, 
8S) 93. 94. 124, 130, 159, 166, 167, 169, 170, 
172. 173, 184, 185, 190, 213, 241, 261, 263, 
264, 268, 278, 285, 297, 298, 309 

The Crime of Christendom, Acts in, 140 

" The Eastern Question," by Canon Mac- 
Coll, quoted, 66, 69, go, loi, 102, 108, 270, 
271, 272, 274 

" The Independent," 77, 78, 81 ; Account 
of Armenian Massacres, 211 

"The New York Sun," on the Present 
Propaganda, 307 

" The Outlook," on Turkish Policy toward 
Missions, 312 

"The Purple East," i7g 

" The Rule of the Turk and the Armenian 
Crisis," by Rev. Frederick D. Greene, 
quoted, igi, ig3, 205, 208, 210 

" The Sultan and the Powers," 267, 28S 

Tigranes I., 144 

Tigranes II., The Great, 146 

Timur the Lame, 147 



INDEX. 



329 



Tiridates, His Miraculous Cure, 148 

Tithe- Farmer, gi 

Tkhoma, Massacre at, 59 

Tocat, Massacre at, ig6 

Torture of Azo, 186 

Tozer, Rev. H. F., on FourthCrusade, 490 

Transcaucasia, 72 ; Population of, 155 

Treaty of Berlin, 100, 134 ; Features of, 
134 ; Releasing the Porte for Butchery, 
139 ; Its Additions to Russia, 157 ; Con- 
cerning Armenians, 175 ; Change in Pres- 
sure of Taxation, 177 ; England's Re- 
sponsability in, 185 

Treaty of Paris, 26, 37, 72 ; Installation of 
Turkey as a Power and the Results, 80 ; 
Scheme of Constitutional Government, 
112; Parliament, 113; Prohibition of 
Arms to Christians, 176 

Treaty-Right of Russia to Protect Chris- 
tians, 140 

Treaty of San Stefano, its Main Features, 
133 ; Provision for Armenian Christians, 
133; Overturning of, 136; Benefits of, 
250 ; How far Reversed, 250 

Trebizond, the Ancient Trapezus, 145, 199 

Tribute-System in Armenia, 182 

Tripartite Treaties, 72 

Turk, Conquest of Greek Empire by, 3 ; 
Condition at the Opening of the Century, 
8 ; Butcher and Oppressor, 9 ; View of 
Eastern Question, 10 ; Character and 
Rights, 12 ; Right in Europe, 12 ; True 
Character, 13 ; Mixed Character, 16 ; Pre- 
tended Right in Europe Forfeited, 20 ; 
' History's Condemnation of, 23 ; Encour- 
aged by the Powers, 68 ; Outwitting the 
Diplomats, 74 ; Attitude after Crimean 
War, in Free Butcheries, 76 ; Ultimatum 
to Christians, 82 ; Reassured by England, 
III ; as Ruler over Christians, 113 ; Giv- 
ing Choice to Christians, 181 

"Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities," by 
Rev. Edwin Munsell Bliss, quoted, 207, 
217 

Turkey, Intriguing for Crimean War, 58 ; 
not one of the Powers, 61 ; made one of 
the Powers, 73 ; Independence by the 
Crimean War, 74 ; Christian Rising 
against, 124 ; Integrity Guaranteed, for 
Cyprus, 137 ; Consciousness of being a 
Power, 187 ; Vulnerability of, 267 

Turkish, Oppression and Barbarism, 20 ; 



so-called Toleration, 21 ; Massacres, 
need of Details, 47 ; Continued Bar- 
barities, 58 ; Principles in full Opera- 
tion, and what they are, 82 ; Tribute, 
meaning and scope, 82 ; Taxes Extra- 
ordinary, 83 ; Loans, how secured, 95 ; 
Debt as a Factor in the Eastern Ques- 
tion, 99 ; Atrocities, Europe roused by, 
100; Commission, a Scheme for Mas- 
sacre, 102 ; Promises worthless, 109 ; 
Tribute, its horrible Features, 181 ; Worst 
Form in Armenia, 182 ; Regular Troops 
leading at Sassun, 192 ; " Protection," 
203 ; Cunning, 276 ; Bonds Endangered, 
304 

Turkish Armenia, Peoples of, 168 

Turkish Debt, 99 ; in Armenian Massacres, 
178, 201 ; Bonds to be provided for, 283 

Turkish Empire, Dismemberment of, 281 ; 
Incongruous Elements in, 281 ; Modes of 
Dealing with, 282 

Turkish Government, Responsibility for 
Massacres, 89, 180 ; Signals the Mas- 
sacres, 204 ; Arms the Rabble, 224 

Turkish Plateau, Cradle of the Race, 166 ; 
Starting-Point of Commerce, 167; Race 
Elements in, 167 

Turkish Reform, Attempts at, 22, 269 ; 
Impossible by the Turk, 269 ; by the 
Three Hatts, 269 ; Successive Failures 
in, 269 ; Self-nullifying, 271 ; Prevented 
by the Multeka, 274 

Turkish Toleration, Character shown,- 275 

u. 

Ultimate Outcome of Present Struggle, 295 
Urfa, Massacre at, 204 ; Massacre renewed, 

217 
Ur, the Ancient, 204 

V. 

Vali of Adrianople, arming Mussulmans, 96 
Vartabad, or Doctor of Theology, 150 
Vienna Note, 68, 81 
Vincent, Sir Edgar, 223 
Voyages, Three Notable, 6, 20 

w. 

Wallace, Mr., His View of Russia, 27 
Watson, William, 179 
Wellington, Duke of, 56, 64, 66 



330 



INDEX. 



Western Christendom, Perfidy of, 49 

"Westminster Gazette," quoted, 226 

Whewell, Prof., 13 

" Will of Peter the Great," 35 

Wilson, Sir Roland, Proposed Dismember- 
ment, 284 

Women Martyrs, 194 

Woolsey, T. D., on Treaty of Paris, 80 

Wright, William, D.D., on the Syrian Mas- 
sacres, 85, 87 



X. 



Xerxes I., 145 



Y. 

Yildiz Kiosk, 178, 305 

" Young Turk," and Ambition, 23 ; Power- 
less, 284 

Z. 

Zeitun, 205 ; History of, 213 ; Revolt and 
Heroic Defense, 213 ; Betrayal of, 215 ; 
the Huntchakists in, 216 ; Turkish Per- 
fidy at, 216 

Zekki Pasha, 191, 195. 



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